THE DANISH TERRORIST THE FLOPPY DISK INVENTOR THREE GRADUATE FILMS Two young men, the same age, same culture and religion. Dr. Nakamats is a cult figure in Japan and a famous Hard knocks and loss of innocence, looking for the Both have had the same opportunities. Why did one be- inventor. He is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, light, and ‘living online’ are the themes in three films come a terrorist? Mistrati og Khaja’s Accidental Terrorist still feeling young. Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s tongue in produced at the National Film School of Denmark, all seeks the answer. IDFA’s Mid-length Competition. cheek portrait is in IDFA’s Mid-length Competition. in competition programmes.

PAGE 11 PAGE 12 PAGE 14 l1l FILM IS PUBLISHED BY THE# DANISH FILM INSTITUTE67 / nOvember 2009

CITIES ON SPEED GLOBAL VISIONS FOR an urban FUTURE BOGOTA CHANGE / MUMBAI disconNected CAIRO GARBAGE / SHANGHAI SPACE

PAGE 2 / FILM#67 / AMSTERDAM SPECIAL ISSUE

FILM#67/ amsterdam issue INSIDE

A DANISH TErrOrIST FLOPPY DISK INvENTOr THrEE GrADUATE FILMS MEGACITIES GLOBAL VISIONS FOR AN URBAN FUTURE Two young men, the same age, same culture and religion. Dr. Nakamats is a cult figure in Japan and a famous Hard knocks and loss of innocence, looking for the Both have had the same opportunities. Why did one be- inventor. He is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, light, and ‘living online’ are the themes in three films come a terrorist? Mistrati og Khaja’s Accidental Terrorist still feeling young. Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s tongue in produced at the National Film School of Denmark, all seeks the answer. IDFA’s Mid-length competition. cheek portrait is in IDFA’s Mid-length Competition. in competition programmes. Introduction Cities on Speed PAGE 03 PAGE 11 PAGE 12 PAGE 14 Bogotá Change / IDFA Reflecting Images: Panorama PAGE 04 l1l Mumbai Disconnected / IDFA Reflecting Images: Panorama PAGE 06 FILM IS PUBLISHED BY THE# DANISH FILM INSTITUTE67 / NOvEMBEr 2009 Cairo Garbage PAGE 07 Shanghai Space PAGE 08 The Motivation for the Cities on Speed project PAGE 10

THE DANISH TERRORIST / IDFA Mid-length Competition Shanghai Space Photo: Mathilde H. Lipmann, Nanna Frank Møller Accidental Terrorist by Miki Mistrati and Nagieb Khaja for Team Productions and Bastard Film & TV PAGE 11

INVENTING A PORTRAIT / IDFA Mid-length Competition The Invention of Dr. Nakamats by Kaspar Astrup Schröder for Plus Pictures PAGE 12 CITIES ON SPEED GLOBAL VISIONS FOR AN uRBAN FuTuRE HARD KNOCKS / IDFA Short Film Competition BOGOTA CHANGE / MuMBAI disCoNNECtEd CAIRO GARBAGE / SHANGHAI sPACE Albert’s Vinter by Andreas Koefoed. PAGE 14

IMAGES LOUDER THAN WORDS / Idfa Student Competition The Invention of Dr. Nakamats Photo: Plus Pictures Northern Lights by Kristoffer Kiørboe. PAGE 16

FILM#67 / Amsterdam A LIFE ON LINE / Idfa Student Competition November 2009 Book of Miri by Katrine Philp. PAGE 17

DISGUISED AS COMMUNISTS / Idfa Reflecting Images: Best Of Fests The Red Chapel by Mads Brügger for Zentropa PAGE 18 PUBLISHED BY Danish Film Institute EDITOR Susanna Neimann CLASSROOM ISOLATION / Idfa Kids & Docs EDITORIAL TEAM Anders Budtz-Jørgensen, Invisible Girls by Sidse Stausholm for Team Productions Vicki Synnott and Bastard Film & TV PAGE 20 TRANSLATIONS Glen Garner (with the exception Albert’s Vinter Photo: Framegrab of pages 3-9 and 29) DESIGN Rasmus Koch Studio IF I CAN’T DANCE IT’S NOT MY REVOLUTION ad Morten C. Bak CPH:DOX Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival TYPE Cendia, Millton, Akzidenz-Grotesk 6-15 November PAGE 21 PAPER Munken Lynx 100 g PRINTED BY Schultz Grafisk COOL COPENHAGEN CIRCULATION 7,000 ISSN 1399-2813 (print version) Dreams in Copenhagen by Max Kestner for Upfront Films PAGE 22 ISSN 1903-7511 (online version) COVER Cities on Speed – Mumbai Disconnected MY PALESTINIAN DAD Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen My Father is from Haifa by Omar Shagawi for Zentropa PAGE 24

The Red Chapel Photo: René Johannsen OBSERVATION TO CONSTRUCTION Out of Love by Birgitte Stærmose for Alphaville Pictures Copenhagen PAGE 26

BODY SCULPTURE Mirror by Joachim Ladefoged for Bastard Film & TV PAGE 28

FILM is published by the Danish Film Institute Apocalypse WOW! (DFI) prior to the festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Amsterdam. Flooded McDonald’s by Superflex PAGE 29

The Danish Film Institute is the national agency METHOD + PRECISION + STRINGENCY responsible for supporting and encouraging film and cinema culture. The Institute’s operations Dreams in Copenhagen Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen Interview with DFI Film Commissioner Jesper Jack PAGE 30 ­extend from participation in the development and production of feature films, shorts and HOW TO HANDLE A HIT documentaries, over distribution and marketing, PAGE 32 to managing the national film archive and the Interview with producer Lise Lense-Møller cinematheque. OBLIGED TO TAKE A STAND Work in progress Blood in the Mobile by Frank Piasecki Poulsen DANISH FILM INSTITUTE for Koncern PAGE 34 Gothersgade 55 DK-1123 Copenhagen K, Denmark T +45 3374 3400 THREE DANISH FILMS PITCHING AT IDFA-FORUM PAGE 36 [email protected] Out of Love Photo: Marek Septimus Wieser CITIES ON SPEED / FILM#67 / PAGE 3

GLOBALMEGACITIES VISIONS FOR an urban FUTURE

Megacities hold an irresistible attraction for migrants from the countryside. As these cities swell their needs multiply. Image of a megacity: Bogota Photo: Andreas Dalsgaard

At this very moment, giant urban been a frame for cinematic narratives – if not the actual Danish Film Institute and the national broadcaster organisms are growing at unprecedented subject itself. A rich tradition in film history of capturing DR made a joint call for submissions for four film rates. Today 50 percent of the world’s modern urban life on celluloid underlies the Cities on projects. The description called for character-driven population lives in urban areas. By 2030 Speed project. documentary tales as vehicles for depicting the this figure is predicted to increase to 80 The series presents four filmic views of human challenges and development potentials that result percent. Growth has far outpaced city conditions in four of the world’s biggest cities, focusing when cities continue to grow to a point in history planning. The challenges and solutions on urban problems and the people who are working on when more than half of the world’s population is to the problems in four of the world’s radical solutions – from underground parks in Shanghai, already living in cities. The ambition was for each biggest cities — Bogotá, Cairo, Mumbai over clowns miming traffic police in Bogotá, to the film to apply its own thematic vision to the issue of and Shanghai — are the focus of the film so-called garbage collectors in Cairo and the Nano cars of megacities and gather new, unexpected and, as far series Cities on Speed, a documentary Mumbai. as possible, entertaining stories from the kind of project commissioned by the Danish Film Not “urban symphonies” in the classic sense, these material that is usually presented on TV as statistics Institute and the national broadcaster DR. are documentary snapshots of life in modern megacities. or negative news reports on crime, slums and How does explosive population growth impact the cities’ pollution. BY LARS MOVIN infrastructure? How do you handle all the problems that In the following pages you can read about the come with such growth? What drives millions of people directors’ visions, their style and the stories they From the birth of the motion-picture medium, the big to migrate from rural villages to these gigantic human chose to tell in their films:Bogotá Change by Andreas city as a living, manifold organism has been a favourite anthills? How does an individual human adapt to a new Dalsgaard and Upfront Films, Cairo Garbage by Mikala subject of filmmakers the world over, pros and reality with limited room and constant change? Krogh and Nimbus Film, Mumbai Disconnected by amateurs, documentary and fiction auteurs, alike. From Camilla Nielsson, Frederik Jacobi and Upfront Films, Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin, die Symphonie der Großstadt CHARACTER-DRIVEN DOCS and Shanghai Space by Nanna Frank Møller and (1927) to Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), the city has To get answers to these questions and more, the Bastard Film & TV. PAGE 4 / FILM#67 / AMSTERDAM SPECIAL ISSUE

”The real secret behind Mockus and Peñalosa’s success is that they are two people characterized by extreme honesty and integrity in everything they do. They are two leaders who have the necessary courage to stay true to their visions, even when the opinion polls go against them.” Andreas Dalsgaard BOGOTÁ CHANGE / ANDREAS DALSGAARD / REFLECTING IMAGES / FILM#67 / PAGE 5

Creating community out of cHaos

Strengthening the individual’s sense of responsibility has been a contributing factor to Bogotá’s success. Photo: Andreas Dalsgaard

Bogotá Change, directed by Andreas Dalsgaard, city, with a well educated middle class and a rich cultural life and is the unique and surprising story of two mayors, some of South America’s top universities. Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, who have “The real secret behind Mockus and Peñalosa’s success is changed behaviour patterns in the Colombian that they are two people characterized by extreme honesty capital, bringing Bogotá out of a negative spiral of and integrity in everything they do. They are two leaders violence and chaos and remaking it as something who have the necessary courage to stay true to their visions, of a visionary role model for other megacities. even when the opinion polls go against them. Unlike other politicians who are controlled by strategies and tactics, they By Lars Movin have not been driven by a lust for power, only by their ideas and philosophies. And if there is a lesson to be learned by their In the ten-year period between 1995 and 2005, Colombia’s story, it must be that the change they have managed to bring Photo: Christian B.V.Andersen capital city, Bogotá, experienced a virtual miracle. Once a city about could never have come from the traditional political characterized by terror, crime and one of the highest murder system. It could only have come from the outside.” ANDREAS DALSGAARD Born 1980, Denmark. B.A. in social rates in the world, Bogotá became a role model for urban What was the most difficult thing about filming in Bogotá? anthropology at Aarhus University, planners around the world. “Colombia is a very segregated society, and there are still 2005. Graduate of the National Film Behind this transformation were two visionary and forward- slum districts in Bogotá where it is not safe to walk around. School of Denmark. Afghan Muscles (2007), Dalsgaard’s debut as a thinking mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, who, I worked with a team consisting of seven Colombians, and it documentary director,was a festival applying drastically different methods, tackled the inhabitants’ was actually something of a challenge to get them to work hit, winning Best Documentary at AFI behaviour and the city’s infrastructure. Using abundant archive in some of the more impoverished neighbourhoods. The Los Angeles and Open Eyes Award material, supplemented by present day footage and interviews, film’s cinematographer, one of Colombia’s most experienced at Rome MedFilm Festival. the Bogotá documentary tells the story of the city’s fantastic documentary photographer, later told me that we had filmed UPFRONT FILMS metamorphosis. in some locations where he never would have imagined setting Formerly known as Cosmo Doc. “Because Mockus and Peñalosa are public figures, foot – and walking away alive.” Main staff: producers: Anna-Maria considerable archive material exists, and digging it up was one With the large amount of archive material, this is a very Kantarius and Henrik Veileborg and production manager Monica of the most demanding tasks involved in making this film.” different film than those you usually make. Has the fact that the Hellström. Company honours include Has seeing the story from the outside been an advantage or story plays out in the past felt like a limitation? Emmy nominations and several disadvantage for you? I quickly arrived at the conclusion that the story itself was so awards, besides films selected for IDFA. Prostitution behind the Veil “For the most part, I think it has been an advantage. The strong and important, that it was not about bringing in all sorts of (Nahid Persson, 2004), Smiling in ‘thesis’ presented by the film is that neither Mockus or Peñalosa innovative stylistic tricks. I felt more obligated to communicate a Warzone (Simone Aaberg Kern, alone can take credit for what has happened, but that it was the story as clearly as possible, precisely because it isn’t just a story Magnus Bejmar, 2005). Christoffer Bogotá’s great fortune that these two mayors happen to about Bogotá, but a universal narrative about change that affects Guldbrandsen’s The Secret War, about Danish military involvement come in succession. Mockus is first and foremost a thinker, us all. The important thing about what has happened in Bogotá is in Iraq stands out as one of the while Peñalosa is a doer, and in this way they compliment that people haven’t solved the problems by coming down hard companies most controversial films. one another. And as an outsider, it has been natural for me and dishing out harder prison sentences, but by creating equality Two films were chosen for IDFA to observe this project’s success as a result of their shared between all types of people in society and strengthening the 2008: Love on Delivery (Silver Wolf Competition) and Ticket to Paradise contributions. individual’s sense of responsibility. In short, it is about putting (Reflecting Images: Panorama). When one hears about the level of violence and corruption in people in the center and creating happiness. And I am very happy 2009: Selected for IDFA’s Reflect- Colombia, one can’t help but wonder how Mockus and Peñalosa to have been able to tell this story.” ing Images: Panorama are Bogotá managed to survive their campaigns. Change and Mumbai Disconnected from the Cities on Speed series. “There are politicians who are ‘removed’ in Colombia, and www.upfrontfilms.dk I can’t say why these two have managed to survive. But it may www.citiesonspeed.dk Andreas Dalsgaard have something to do with the fact that Bogotá, despite all of For further information about Cities on Speed — Bogotá Change,

Photo: its problems with crime, drugs and slums, is also a very liberal see catalogue in reverse section. PAGE 6 / FILM#67 / CITIES ON SPEED / MUMBAI DISCONNECTED / NIELSSON&JACOBI / REFLECTING IMAGES

INFRASTRUCTURE out of CONTROL

Mumbai Disconnected Photo: Camilla Nielsson

Humour is a powerful element in Mumbai that is central to the narrative. Veena always spoke unprompted Disconnected, directed by Camilla Nielsson and and without encouragement when she was in her car. Yasin trains Frederik Jacobi. Mumbai is growing like it was every morning and uses the physical atmosphere to formulate his on steroids. But a collapsing infrastructure is strategy in the city. And in Mr. Das’ office, there is a bureaucratic threatening to put an end to the booming economy, ping-pong match across the desk which we tried to capture with and is making the daily commute close to the camera. unbearable for Mumbai’s 20 million citizens, where Tell us about your experience of being dropped in the middle of a 13 people die every day on the railroads. city of 20 million people? “It was overwhelming. We first and foremost approached the By Lars Movin assignment with great humility. At the same time, however, we felt Photo: Frederik Jacobi that we as outsiders might be able to see other things that the locals In Mumbai Disconnected, we are presented with three could not. For example, we spoke with an Indian director who said CAMILLA NIELSSON Born 1970, Denmark. M.A. in visual characters. Veena Singhal was born and raised in Mumbai, and that she would never have thought to enter the Maharashtra State anthropology and Certificate in has lived 39 years on Peddar Road, where she is president of Road Development office and film the way we have.” Culture and Media from New York the Peddar Road Residents Association and has fought for eight What was your greatest challenge? University (NYU). Her film The years against a planned flyover, a highway overpass, which “Permits were a huge problem. The Indian writer, Suketu Children of Darfur (2006) won the Monte Carlo TV Festival Grand Prix, according to her and the other area residents would increase Mehta, wrote in his book, Maximum City, called Mumbai ‘the TV3 Award in Spain, and Miradas pollution 540 percent and destroy their neighbourhood. city of no.’ People on the street are very helpful if you are stuck Doc Award. Co-director on Cities Yasin is one of the city’s millions of immigrants. He lives on the train or get lost, but among those in power, there is so on Speed — Mumbai Disconnected, in the northern outlying districts and must fight his way little room for human consideration that its easiest for them to selected for IDFA’s Reflecting Images: Panorama. onboard the overloaded trains to travel to the Crawford just say ‘no,’ regardless of what you are asking. Market downtown, where he sells stuffed animals on the Were there any strokes of luck? street corner. He is driven by his dream of a better life – and “We had plenty, particularly when it came to our main FREDERIK JACOBI Born 1974, Denmark. Trained as of one day owning his own car. And between these two we characters. Veena seemed quiet motivated to share her a cinematographer. Shot the film find a government bureaucrat, Mr. Das, the Vice President of story about her fight against the flyover, and the film was an Ghosts of Cite Soleil (2006), the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, whose opportunity for her to reach an international audience. Yasin recipient of the DGA Award, Afghan job is to find solutions to Mumbai’s overwhelming traffic told us straight out that he wanted to be a Bollywood actor, and Muscles (2007), which won Best Documentary at AFI, the US film problems. he was clearly something of a performer, so he was excited to Death in Love (2008), selected for “We have called it a comedy about infrastructure. Mumbai be involved in the project. He was also politically aware, and Sundance. As director, the short can be a tough place to live. 10-13 people die every day on the he saw the film as an opportunity to bring up some very sharp film The Sound of Plants Fighting railroad tracks, and it would all be too easy to make a dystopian points about Western views on issues such as the environment for Life, shot in the Amazonas, with himself as lead actor. 2009: Debut film about the city. It is such a huge organism, and it suffers and consumption in his part of the world. And even though Mr. as screenplay writer with the feature daily from collapse. But the Mumbaikers themselves are well Das may have been the one who had the least personal interest film The Expatriate by Jørgen Leth aware of the near grotesque aspects of their situation, and in taking part, he was a classic example of a bureaucrat who and Cities on Speed — Mumbai doesn’t simply hide away in his office, but who truly fights for Disconnected (2009), selected for miraculously, they are able to make things work. They can sit IDFA’s Reflecting Images: Panorama. in a traffic jam for three hours and still find the humorous side his cause, and who has a high sense of honour when it comes of things, and this life-affirming spirit is what we wanted to to doing his job well. In that sense, then, we were very lucky capture. And of course, it seemed obvious to borrow a bit from to find such interesting characters to work with. They were UPFRONT FILMS www.uprontfilms.dk the humor that generally characterizes Bollywood films.” almost like three archetypes.” See page 5. What about the stylistic side of things? www.citiesonspeed.dk “The film’s style emerged from the encounter between our characters and the camera. Both Veena and Yasin quickly began For further information about Cities on Speed — Mumbai speaking spontaneously to the camera. This became a filmic space Disconnected, see catalogue in reverse section. CITIES ON SPEED / CAIRO GARBAGE / MIKALA KROGH / FILM#67 / PAGE 7

were already interested in the environment or documentaries. So than the one we normally see. I hope that the combination of my observational film language In the West, most stories about and some journalistic elements can shed light on the topic in such that part of the world either a way that people in the rest of the world can identify with the take pity on the Muslims, or CHANGING problems that people are struggling with in Cairo.” in the case of fundamentalists, What is it that separates your film from a journalistic television gladly portray women with production? headscarves as oppressed. For “Specifically, it must have something to do with the time this reason, it seems relevant to HABITS dimension: the fact that I was present for a period of four to tell a story about how, in many five months and followed my characters in a way that allows ways, everyday life in Egypt is Cairo Garbage, directed by Mikala Krogh, takes us for some sort of development to take place. In a typical TV very much like ours; also, in on a journey into Cairo’s “garbage cities,” entire piece, a journalist goes in and interviews the people about this case, women have actually neighbourhoods where people earn a living sorting what happened. In my film, we can follow along and see how taken the initiative to go out and recycling garbage. Cairo shows us the culture attitudes and routines slowly change. And it may also have and actively try to solve the and habit factors at play in this Middle Eastern something to do with the visual language. Visually, I have problems at hand.” INFRASTRUCTURE city, where Italian contractors are hired to solve consciously worked with either total images or very close cuts increasingly unmanageable waste-management to communicate the relationships between the big city and the For further information about tasks. different challenges faced by individuals.” Cities on Speed — Cairo What were your greatest challenges? Garbage, see catalogue in out of CONTROL By Lars Movin “First and foremost, Cairo is a very demanding place to film reverse section. because it is difficult to obtain the necessary permits. And once Historically, the so-called ‘garbage people’ have been able to you’ve got them, you are still under surveillance and must be manage Cairo’s total waste production, but as a result of the careful of what you do. It was also a personal challenge for me city’s explosive population growth, which has placed pressure to work with a local photographer, because in all of my other on the old system, city authorities have outsourced part of the films I’ve worked with the same two photographers, with whom waste collection and management work to a number of foreign I share a common cinematographic language. But it turned out companies, including the Italian firm, Ama Arab, in order to to be a huge gift, because the photographer I ended up working avoid an environmental catastrophe. with understood the language and knew Cairo extremely well.” Mikala Krogh had already considered making a film on one – The film’s narrative motor is garbage, but what do you see as of Cairo’s garbage cities before Cities on Speed was announced. the overall theme? “When my project was selected, one prerequisite was that “It’s about changing our habits, and about being able to adapt my original presentation had to be expanded upon to include a as cities develop. And that is a universal narrative. Indirectly, broader perspective, so that it was not solely about the garbage of course, it is also about consumption, but again, it was not people, but more about how renovation was handled in Cairo my intention to go in, point fingers and ask critical questions Photo: Danish Documentary Production – which includes the political level, city planning and so on. So concerning whether or not people consume too much in

that was the assignment I had when I travelled to Cairo.” Egypt or whether they could do things differently. I am more MIKALA KROGH How did the specific requirements affect your usual way of interested in pointing out areas where we resemble one another Born 1973, Denmark. Graduate of working? across national and cultural boundaries. And I believe that the National Film School of Denmark, “First and foremost, it meant that I had to try to combine my everyone is familiar with the difficulties involved in adapting 2001. Films include My Grandfather’s Murderer (with Søren Fauli, 2004), more observational method with a more journalistic element, – whether it involves carrying your garbage down to the street awarded in Sevilla and Paris, and which was an interesting challenge. As a whole, I was quite and leaving it in a container, taking shorter showers or leaving Beth’s Diary (with Kent Klich, 2006), convinced that the film had to be able to work on television and your car at home. It’s a challenge for all of us. awarded at CPH:DOX.and Nordic would have to be directed to a wider public beyond those who “In this way I wished to paint another picture of the Middle East Panorama. Everything is Relative (2008) was selected for Karlovy Vary and won the Grand Prix at Taipei.

NIMBUS FILM Founded 1993 by Birgitte Hald and Bo Ehrhardt. Celebrated for several Dogme films, includingFesten / The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998). Other films:Dark Horse (2005),selected for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard; A Soap (2006), double-winner at Berlin. Flame & Citron (2008), greatest Danish boxoffice success in recent years. 2009-2010: Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn), Over gaden under vandet (Charlotte Sieling), Submarino (Thomas Vinterberg). www.nimbusfilm.dk

Danish Documentary PRODUCTION Founded in 2008 by three IDFA Amsterdam winners, Pernille Rose Grønkjær (The Monastery), Eva Mulvad (Enemies of Happiness); Phie Ambo (Mechanical Love and Family); together with awardwinning director Mikala Krogh and producer Sigrid Helene Dyekjær. www.danishdocumentary.com Cairo Garbage Photo: Lara Balad PAGE 8 / FILM#67 / CITIES ON SPEED / SHANGHAI SPACE / NANNA FRANK MØLLER

DESPERATELY SEEKING SPACE

Shanghai Space Photo: Nanna Frank Møller

Shanghai Space, directed by Nanna Frank Møller, man-on-the-street with the official who represents the state, takes a poetic and contemplative look at the and getting them both to interact with the city in a movement abnormal growth of China’s great port city, where that can be called a filmic narrative.” a new building is constructed every other day, Have you at any time felt that your tranquil cinematic language and where the population increases by half a might not work against the experience of being in a hectic million people each year. A photographer, who has metropolis, where one’s senses are constantly bombarded? documented the city’s changes over the decades, “No, because even though one finds oneself in a megacity, is now himself a victim of that development, while the individual is still in his or her subjective present, which is a professor of urban planning fantasizes about an generally peaceful. That is also why it was a blessing to have underground city. a main character who was a photographer, who in this sense exudes tranquility amidst chaos. So no, I don’t feel that I’ve Photo: Mathilde Hvid Lipmann By Lars Movin forced form onto reality.” Where does your general penchant for open, one-face images NANNA FRANK MØLLER How will people in Shanghai continue to find space for the come from? Born 1972, Denmark. Graduated in many new immigrants, and what does growth mean for the “From a technical point of view, it must have something to editing at the National Film School of Denmark, 1999. Edited several films, city’s relationship with its own history? do with my experience as a film cutter. For me, editing film is among them The Land of Human These questions are among those reflected upon via the transferring feeling and energy from one image to another, and Beings — My Film about Greenland films two main characters: Xixan Xu, a passionate amateur that type of image is simply great to cut between. The wider (2006). Her directorial debut, Someone photographer, who has spent a lifetime documenting the the passage through which feeling can flow, the better. From a Like You (2007), won the Grand Prix for Best Danish Film, Odense. Let’s changes the city has undergone, and who himself has more thematic standpoint, I feel it coincides with the fact that, in Be Together (2008), selected for become a victim of Shanghai’s development; and Yu Shu, an my preparation, I try to embrace whatever currents are moving CPH:DOX and IDFA’s Kids & Docs. urban planning professor who fantasizes about a future city through a big city like Shanghai. 2009: Cities on Speed — Shanghai underground. Nanna Frank Møller tells: “On one level you might say that, historically, there has Space.

“To me it seems natural that a film is driven by characters not been enough space to think independently in China, with whom I can identify. That is why I never doubted that, which is also something that Xixan Xu felt during the Cultural BASTARD FILM & TV even though the assignment was based on portraying a city, the Revolution. On another level, we have the professor who has Founded 2000. Titles include: The Red Gold (Signe Mølgaard, 2004); film could of course tell different peoples’ stories. And because visions of tomorrows China having open space, and that said Enemies of Happiness (Eva Mulvad, the project was about a city like Shanghai, I immediately came space may be located underground. I work with this from a 2006), winner of IDFA’s Silver Wolf to think of how the individual finds space for himself in the rhetorical standpoint, in the sense that one might hope that Award; Little Miss Grown-Up (Anders Gustafsson & Patrik Book, 2008), constant change that this special place represents. How does the city’s many cranes and constructions sites are the result of selected for IDFA Kids & Docs in 2008, one find space in a place where there is so little space?” having invited foreign firms to invest in Shanghai, and that the and Let’s Be Together (Nanna Frank In the film, the viewer recognizes your aesthetic preferences new buildings are therefore really a symbol of China beginning Møller, 2008), a CPH:DOX competitor and the significant space around the people you film. Was to open itself up to the outside world.” and selected for IDFA’s Kids & Docs 2009 together with Invisible Girls maintaining your own voice a particular challenge within the (Sidse Stausholm, 2009), the three given framework? For further information about Cities on Speed — Shanghai Space, latter films co-produced with Team “Filming is a very intuitive process in which one is always see catalogue in reverse section. Productions. Other productions in making decisions on the spot concerning what to include in the 2009: Blekingegadebanden by Anders Nanna Frank Møller

Riis-Hansen, Cities on Speed — images. However, it was naturally a challenge to incorporate Shanghai Space by Nanna Frank Møller, different factual pieces of information, as that is something I and, produced with Team Productions, Photo: generally do not work with. My solution was to regularly try to Accidental Terrorist by Miki Mistrati intuit whether including the relevant information contributed and Nagieb Khaja, selected for IDFA’s Mid-Length Competition programme. something to the characters. Subsequently, the task consisted These four director-interviews are edited versions of the booklet www.bastardfilm.dk

of getting the two main characters to interact, playing off the texts accompanying the DVD edition: Cities on Speed. www.citiesonspeed.dk Shanghai Space AMSTERDAM SPECIAL ISSUE / FILM#67 / PAGE 9 Nanna Frank Møller

Photo:

Shanghai Space PAGE 10 / FILM#67 / AMSTERDAMCITIES ON SPEED SPECIAL ISSUE

WHAT’S IT TO ME? How do we make developments in the non-Western world interesting to people in the exported methods and attitudes, and a lot of what West? That question brought together two Danish Film Institute film commissioners, we’re seeing in the world’s cities can be viewed as a Dola Bonfils and Michael Haslund-Christensen. Two years ago they initiated a film projection of problems we already familiar to us on project to examine visions for humanity’s urban future, focusing on the development of a smaller scale. so-called megacities in the non-Western world. Old and New Financing By susanna neimann Shared Premise The two DFI film commissioners consider a project like Cities on Speed comprises four separate films by four Cities on Speed an opportunity to investigate new paths Dola Bonfils and Michael Haslund-Christensen shared a different directors with widely different artistic for documentary film production and distribution, in Cem (left) posing with Danish peer Abdulkadir with whom he meets in a Bosnian prison. Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen desire to visualize and address the fact that more than temperaments. The films were to be conceived in terms of content, network forms and business models. half of the world’s population already live in cities, a the Danish tradition of character-based stories with “Working with the industry, we need to explore rate that is expected to rise to 80% by 2030: Who or a personal imprint. The directors had the artistic new ways of doing things,” Haslund-Christensen what controls the development of megacities? How freedom to tell the stories their way. says. “Pitching the Cities on Speed series at the do we formulate visions for future urban living? What But the four films were also intended to work as HotDocs Forum in 2008 in Toronto was a breeze. does this development mean to people who live in a series, jointly illuminating and perspectivising the Backed by funds from the DFI, DR and DANIDA, megacities? And what can people in the West learn central theme. To create the best possible starting the producers came in with a basic economy from these wildly growing cities? point for production and promotion, it was essential covering 60% of the production costs of fully to work within a shared framework. developed projects with pilots, defined stories and Essential Partners ”For starters, everyone needed a common level logistical completion plans. That’s highly unusual in Danida, short for Danish International Development of knowledge,” Michael Haslund-Christensen says. international documentary film financing with high- Agency, is an organisation under the Ministry of “Before making their first research trips, every end financing. In turn, within a relatively short time, Foreign Affairs that funds public information efforts, director and producer involved took part in a we were able to bring in the remaining financing including film production. DFI consultants have workshop led by architects and urban planners from international partners, which allowed us to frequently collaborated with Danida on film projects, to acquire some insight into the overall issue maintain our creative momentum throughout the and Danida was immediately sold on the idea of films of urbanisation. As a further requirement, each creative process and start principal photography with wide appeal and direct broadcast access. Dola production had to include a local partner in the within just a year of project initiation. Bonfils explains: designated city. We wanted to look at the cities not “It’s been a learning experience for all parties “We formed a think tank with Danida to discuss only from above, but also from within. Thirdly, to create the series,” he says, adding that projects possible subjects. Out of that came the idea to make the themes for the four cities would be examined like Cities on Speed make it possible more clearly to a call for films on the theme of the enormous global vertically – that is, they would include the overall identify the future obstacles and potentials of the and demographic challenge posed by the migration of perspective of urban planning.” documentary genre. people from rural to urban areas. A significant part of “It was an interesting process, in the discussions, “We have gained new and valuable experiences the framework was made possible by substantial early to work towards the shared recognition that, yes, in handling public and private financing with investments by the DFI and the Danish Broadcasting we do give a damn, the world really does concern different industry players. We have employed Corporation DR in developing the project.” us,” Bonfils says. “Among Danish audiences it is our new methods to optimise the artistic treatment of At this point Danida stepped back, and the DFI experience that every time we say ‘the non-Western a complex theme and we see a host of untapped and DR wrote a joint call for submissions, eventually world,’ we get a friendly look back, saying, ‘Isn’t potentials for using such an extensive gathering selecting four proposals concerning cities in four that interesting, but what’s it to me?’ But there’s of material on platforms other than broadcast. different geographical regions: Africa, South no getting around globalisation! We’re responsible Hopefully, there will be opportunities to further America, the Middle East and South East Asia. for the direction development is taking. We have develop those platforms in the future.”

ACCIDENTAL TERRORIST / MISTRATI & KHAJA / IDFA MID-LENGTH COMPETITION / FILM#67 / PAGE 11

“We didn’t know if we would even get to see Abdulkadir. And if we hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been any film. A lot of people probably would not have made that gamble, but I like to gamble big.” Miki Mistrati

on The Accidental Terrorist, when the on a TV documentary investigating filmmakers found themselves at a Abdulkadir’s trial, found no dead end. conclusive proof of Abdulkadir’s guilt. “I’m used to persuading people,” Hence the film’s provocative title. Mistrati laughs. “I’m not an artist. “I think he ended up where he I’m a craftsman. And I immediately did by accident. He was simply in started digging into the case,” he says. the wrong place at the wrong time. “Because I once did a programme that Which is exactly what he claims,” represented criminal immigrants in Mistrati says. In Abdulkadir, Mistrati a different light than they are usually sees a universal story of a young viewed in Denmark, I was able to person groping towards some sense gain the trust of several of the people of belonging. involved.” However, the crew could “Abdulkadir experienced a take nothing for granted when they religious awakening when he was arrived in Sarajevo. young, but so do a lot of other kids. “We didn’t know if we would get Some kids become bikers, others even to see Abdulkadir. And if we become hip-hoppers like myself,” hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been any Mistrati says. “Cem and Abdulkadir film. A lot of people probably would could easily have ended up in each not have made that gamble, but I like other’s shoes.” to gamble big,” Mistrati says with a sly grin. For further information about Terrorist ved et tilfælde / Accidental Terrorist, WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME see catalogue in reverse section. Mistrati was the one who got the idea to mirror the convicted terrorist in Cem (left) posing with Danish peer Abdulkadir with whom he meets in a Bosnian prison. Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen law-abiding Cem, who grew up under similar circumstances, but ended up in an entirely different place in life. THE DANISH TERRORIST Identical conditions but different results. Mistrati and Khaja made a point of having a central character The Accidental Terrorist, a a fanatic? And how did he end up in a that young people could identify with. documentary for young people, Bosnian prison? “We adamantly did not want to is a side-by-side look at two The Accidental Terrorist follows have a panel of experts explaining young men. They are the same Cem as he investigates the terror- the story. Kids want to experience MIKI MISTRATI (left) age, from the same culture and convicted Danish national. Cem things for themselves, and so we Born 1977, Denmark. Journalist since 1994. religious background and they Has produced over 30 documentaries for the talks with a former classmate of wanted to facilitate a high level of national broadcasters DR and TV /2. Numerous had the same opportunities. Abdulkadir, with his sister and his identification,” Mistrati says. The honours for his work, including thrice Why did one become a contact in Bosnia. Finally, as the reporter was delighted when his nominee and once winner of the presitigious terrorist? first person ever, Cem is allowed to film took the Youth Jury Prize at the Cavling Award. Director with Najieb Khaja on Accidental Terrorist (2009). interview Abdulkadir on camera in Odense Film Festival. BY SOPHIE ENGBERG SONNE his Sarajevo prison. The Accidental Terrorist does not take a stand on Abdulkadir’s NAGIEB KHAJA (right) “When a handful of Muslims decide Top Snoop guilt. Instead, it leaves you with the Born 1972, Denmark. Graduate of the University of Southern Denmark, Khaja is a to carry out a terrorist attack, it The Accidental Terrorist is brought impression of a young man who renowned Danish journalist and twice nominee harms me too,” Cem says. Since to us by two journalists: Nagieb made some unfortunate choices as a of the prestigious Cavling Award. Journalist for 11 September 2001, the Turkish- Khaja, who is of Afghan extraction teenager and now has to live with the the national broadcaster DR, later moved to born protagonist of The Accidental and has insight into Denmark’s consequences of them for the rest of TV 2/Danmark. Among his important works are The Triple A Case, Drabet på Rust and Den Terrorist has been eyed as a potential immigrant community. Miki Mistrati, his life. hemmelige krig. Director with Miki Mistrati on terrorist. Among those who make the person behind a much discussed “Abdulkadir was struggling with Accidental Terrorist. life hard for Cem is Abdulkadir Cesur, Danish documentary about serious his identity in his teenage years and a young Danish Muslim convicted maltreatment at homes for people dropped out. He joined a different Bastard film & tv of conspiracy to commit an act of with developmental disabilities. community and now has to live See page 8 terrorism. Cem’s curiosity is piqued Mistrati, moreover is head of the with the consequences of travelling www.bastardfilm.dk when he finds out that Abdulkadir is tabloid Ekstra-Bladet’s so-called in the circles he did,” Mistrati says. Accidental Terrorist is produced by Mette of the same age and background as Snoop Group for investigative Abdulkadir professes his innocence. Heide of Plus Pictures and Helle Faber of himself. Why did Abdulkadir become journalism. He was called in to work Mistrati, who is currently working Bastard Film & TV. PAGE 12 / FILM#67 / DR. NAKAMATS / SCHRÖDER / IDFA MID-LENGTH COMPETITION

INVENTING A PORTRAIT A profound interest in Japanese culture led the director Kaspar Astrup Schröder by Schröder’s film takes us on a unique journey into coincidence to Dr Nakamats, an eccentric inventor who by his own count holds more the charismatic inventor’s personal world, though than 3400 patents and is planning a final coup: living to be 144. The portrait of Dr. there are times when you wonder how much Dr Nakamats is told with tongue in cheek, and it is not always clear, who stages the story Nakamats is playing to the camera. This is even – the director or the inventor … more the case if you who don’t know a lot about Japanese culture, so much of which can look odd to BY EVA NOVRUP REDVALL an exercise that pushes his mind to produce new the uninitiated eye. thoughts. Although in Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s film Schröder, who is also an artist and photographer, Dr Yoshiro Nakamats describes himself as one of portrait, The Invention of Dr Nakamats, the doctor is fascinated by Japanese culture and has travelled the world’s most important inventors. He invented is seen celebrating his 80th birthday, he considers widely in Japan. Even so, crossing paths with Dr the floppy disk, a bicycle engine that runs on water, his death to be a far-off in the future. His mother Nakamats sent him on a journey beyond anything bouncing shoes, Viagra for women and much, much lived to be 102 and he keeps her brain in his house he had seen before. more. He currently holds 3400 patents and plans to preserved in formaldehyde. Personally, he plans increase this further to 7000 before he dies. to live to 144, partly by healthy living and partly REALITY ON A PRODUCTION SCHEDULE Most of the ideas for his inventions come to by … who knows. Maybe he’ll invent something to Schröder had been reading about Dr Nakamats on him while diving underwater in a swimming pool, prolong his life. one of the many Japan blogs he likes to read for DR. NAKAMATS / SCHRÖDER / IDFA MID-LENGTH COMPETITION / FILM#67 / PAGE 13

inspiration. Dr Nakamats’s homepage provided the thought. Still, these hidden surprises were not now, he is looking forward to showing his new contact information and Schröder e-mailed to hear if enough to shift the film’s centre of gravity any film in Amsterdam. He has been to the festival once he was interested in meeting to discuss a film project. further than it already had. Initially conceived as a before as an editor on another film, but now his Dr NakaMats responded promptly and turned out to tender, humorous portrait of an eccentric inventor, own film is competing, and he’s looking forward have ample ideas of his own about what a film about the film had expanded into a study of a man to seeing his team in Amsterdam, as well as Dr him should be like. The filmmaker says it was mainly a determined to fight death. Nakamats, who will be attending the festival. question of hanging on for the ride. “We all have our demons. Dr Nakamats is “We became good friends while we were “He was interested, but he also had a lot of fighting his fear of death. He does everything he can making the film, and I want it to give people a good thoughts about how the film should be. I originally to cheat death,” Schröder says. “My story about him impression of him as the unique individual he is,” planned to be the proverbial fly on the wall and gradually evolved to be more about the relationship Schröder says. “The rumour mill is churning with observe his life, but when I arrived he had already between life and death in general and less about myths and opinions about him, and this film is a drawn up a 130-page production plan. I ended his specific inventions. As Dr Nakamats says in the close-up look that shows him as more than the up spending 29 very long days shooting, getting final line of the film, ‘When I’m 143, then maybe I’ll inventor of the floppy disk.” more than 100 hours of footage from 50 different think, Next year I’ll die….’ He’s a man on a mission, locations. The pace was truly breakneck and and it was interesting to bring out that aspect of his For further information about Opfindelsen af Dr. Nakamats constantly had an opinion about how personality.” Nakamats / The Invention of Dr. Nakamats, see things should progress,” Schröder says. catalogue in reverse section. AN INTERNATIONAL TEAM ACCESS AND STAGING The graphic design and the music for Dr Nakamats The film makes it plain that Dr Nakamats enjoys have a very distinct style, the result of Schröder’s staging himself, not just for the camera but in other desire to sign up his own international sources of situations in his life as well. All along, he gave the inspiration. Though the director never physically camera unlimited access to a lot of situations that we met the British graphic designer Rob Chiu aka usually don’t get to see from Japan. The Ronin or the American composer Mark “Dr Nakamats is an incredibly fascinating Mothersbaugh, who scored The Royal Tenenbaums personality, and in a lot of ways he is unlike other and other films, he describes their collaboration as a Japanese. As an individual, he sticks out in a crowd. happy process. Working via Skype and the Net, they In addition to portraying him, I also wanted my film pushed the graphics and the music in new directions to depict contemporary Japan through his everyday until they had become central to the film. life. Personally, I’m fascinated by Japanese culture, “I contacted people I wanted to work with, and so getting the kind of access I did because I was with getting them onboard was a real gift to me to,” Dr Nakamats was outstanding. In fact, it was almost Schröder says. “Obviously, not being in the same uncanny how invisible I was when I followed him physical location presents certain challenges, but it around. I got to film everywhere without anyone worked out surprisingly well, though there was some reacting to it, which usually is a hard thing to do in back and forth as we settled on the role of the graphic Japan,” Schröder says. At one point, he attended a design and the music in the film. I always wanted the highly emotional funeral without anyone remarking graphics to stand out. We even tried surrounding on his presence. Dr Nakamats with a world of dialogue balloons, but “No one raised an eyebrow at me or my camera. that seemed too contrived as if we were making a At times it felt strange to be so invisible, but it spectacle of him. It was important for me to be on his was most definitely a gift,” the director says. “I’m side, though he’s like no one else I ever met. Likewise, attracted to documentaries because of the element we didn’t want to Mickey Mouse the score. It should of spontaneity – my art and my music are largely follow him and elevate him, in his story.” Photo: Selfportrait

“He was interested, but he also had a lot of thoughts about KASPAR ASTRUP SCHRÖDER Born 1979, Denmark. Self-taught visual artist and designer. how the film should be. I originally planned to be the Founded the company Kaspar (pseudodyms: KSPR or Kasparworks) in 2004. Though based in Copenhagen, he often proverbial fly on the wall and observe his life, but when I works in Asia. Has exhibited visual work and released music in arrived he had already drawn up a 130-page production plan. Copenhagen, Amsterdam, bruxelles, New York and Tokyo. His documentary film City Surfers (2007) won Best Danish Film and I ended up spending 29 very long days shooting (…)” Filmic Award at the D.A.F.F. Festival and The Invention of Dr. Nakamats (2009), selected for IDFA’s Mid-length Competition. Ö Kaspar Astrup Schr der commenting on his star performer. A companion book to the film compiles the director’s journal entries from his time in Japan with Dr Nakamats. improvisational. This film, however, was more about GETTING TOGETHER AT IDFA framing and staging, and that was an exciting and Schröder’s international collaborators were huge PLUS PICTURES very different process for me.” inspirations, but the director is also eager to stress Founded in 2008 by Mette Heide. Heide’s productions include: 2009 Danish Academy Award winner Little Miss Grown Up that the film would not have been possible without (2008), Danish Academy Award Winner Milosevic on Trial, and CHEATING DEATH the support of experienced Danish professionals, Why Democracy, a series of 10 films. Awards for the series Schröder doesn’t speak Japanese yet, though he is including his producer, Mette Heide of Plus Pictures, include the Grierson Award (Please Vote for Me), an Academy working on it. For most of the film, Dr Nakamats and his editor, Adam Nielsen. He also highlights Award (Taxi to the Dark Side), won a Danish TV-Oscar, Banff-award (Iron Ladies of Liberia). Plus Pictures titles for addresses the camera in English, explaining his the fruitful dialogue he had with project editor Kim winter spring 2009/2010: among othersThe Prague Affair inventions or introducing his family and business Leona of New Danish Screen, who was an early by Christoffer Emil Bruun selected for CPH:DOX, The Royal contacts. Later, during the editing, the translation backer of his project. Climate by Jan Bacher Dirchsen, Under Suspicion by Louise Detlefsen, Last White Man Standing by Justin Webster, The of Japanese dialogue material revealed a host of The Invention of Dr. Nakamats has whetted Stars Playground by Torben Skjødt Jensen, and The Invention surprises when what was being discussed turned Schröder’s appetite to do more documentaries, of Dr. Nakamats by Kaspar Astrup Schröder, selected for IDFA’s out to be entirely different than the director had ideally about Japan and Japanese conditions. For Mid-length Competition. PAGE 14 / FILM#67 / ALBERT’S WINTER / ANDREAS KOEFOED / IDFA SHORT FILM COMPETITION HARD KNOCKS

Albert’s Winter Photo: Framegrab

Albert’s Winter, Anders Koefoed’s and he is becoming a man. Albert’s Winter is about a for me that, although Albert’s mother is sick, the film graduation film from the National Film small boy’s first experience with serious illness and also shows some of the other things that are going School of Denmark, tells the story of an fear of loss. These are situations, Koefoed says, in on in his life,” Koefoed says. eight-year-old boy who is goes through a which life reveals its hardness and its beauty. Being In the film, Albert is not much up to talking about tough time after his mother is diagnosed afraid of losing your mother is tough. But when illness the things that are weighing on his mind – whether with cancer. Koefoed seeks to examine strikes, the family also becomes more conscious of the it’s changing schools or his mother’s illness. Albert’s those times when life first knocks us off importance of their love for each other. parents talked to him about the factual matters of our feet, but also lets us grow. “There is beauty in the film in the love between the disease when his mother first got sick. He knew mother and son and in the family’s love that exactly when her chemotherapy would end. But BY FREJA DAM becomes so clear because of the devastating after that he didn’t want to talk about it. As Koefoed experience they are going through,” Koefoed sees it, many adults think problems need to be Albert is eight years old and already facing the says. He considers Albert’s way of coping with the discussed in order to be processed, but children seriousness of life. His mother has breast cancer situation life affirming. process difficult things in a more wordless way, and and is undergoing chemotherapy. Albert would “Albert is brave. He doesn’t knuckle under. He that can be just as healthy. rather not talk about it. Meanwhile, life goes on and processes the problems in silence and is ready to “I don’t think every problem in life is solved by Albert has new challenges to confront, among them move on with his life – changing schools and leaving talking about it. Some things simply need time to moving to a new school. behind his familiar surroundings,” Koefoed says. settle. A fear of losing your mother is not something Andreas Koefoed decided to make his film you get over simply by rationalising and analysing. about Albert because the boy’s crisis expresses the LIFE MOVING ON These things take time and they can be struggle,” universal human emotions of someone getting his The film shows Albert taking the entrance exam at Koefoed says. first knocks in life. Sankt Annæ Gymnasium, a choir school. Initially, “I’m occupied with those times when you face Albert doesn’t want to change schools, but when ROOM FOR CONTEMPLATION hardships in life,” Koefoed says. “When you leave your he is admitted he ends up taking all the changes in A small boy who might be losing mother to cancer innocence behind and move on in life a wiser person.” his stride. Koefoed chose to focus on this change of and has to perform a song makes for a touching The director last year made 12 Notes Down, which schools, because it’s an image of life moving on. story, naturally. It could easily have skidded into ran in IDFA’s Student Competition and Kids & Docs “It is a sign of Albert’s strength that he is able to sentimentality, Koefoed says. One way to avoid that 2008. 12 Notes Down is about a boy, Jorgis, who has sing so well and pass the entrance exam, in spite of was to work with a minimalist score, parts of which to leave the boys choir because his voice is changing all everything that’s on his mind. It was important he composed himself. ALBERT’S WINTER / ANDREAS KOEFOED / IDFA SHORT FILM COMPETITION / FILM#67 / PAGE 15

“Swelling bombastic music would seem out of place “I could feel that my sister wanted her story to be in a film about a young boy. It is better served by a told. Albert thought it was okay, too, that I followed small, derelict organ played with a slightly child-like him around,” Koefoed says. “On a practical level, it sensibility,” Koefoed says. was also a way for me to share a difficult time with Visually, the director was likewise careful not to my family and get to spend time with them.” overwhelm the viewer with emotions. The film goes Fortunately, they got off with a fright – after her close to Albert, but it lets the viewer breathe. chemo, Albert’s mother is cancer free. “I wanted it to be sensitive, while I tried to avoid making it claustrophobic by including THE PERSONAL AND THE UNIVERSAL occasional long shots and pauses where all you The recent film-school graduate is currently see is snow falling, with music and maybe Albert working on several film projects. One is about three HARD throwing a snowball or two – sequences that don’t Senegalese boys who are discovered by a football necessarily tell a story but give the viewer room to agent and invited to tryouts with clubs in Europe, contemplate,” Koefoed says. where they scramble for contracts. Before film school Koefoed was a sociology student, and the FILMING FAMILY football film is a way for him to combine personal Albert is Koefoed’s nephew, his sister’s son. Filming stories with a sociological, critical look beneath the your own family, and someone as young as Albert, surface of professional football, exposing the base presented Koefoed with a host of ethical issues. inequality between Africa and Europe. How would Albert feel later in life that there’s a Moreover, in collaboration with the director KNOCKS film about him at a tough time in his life that maybe Christian Bonke, Koefoed is working on a film for presents events differently than he remembers New Danish Screen. The film follows some of the them? Would Albert’s mother, battling cancer, need world’s top ballroom-dancing couples, who are Koefoed to not just stand there with a camera but partners both professionally and privately. Again, really be there for her? After talking it over with his Koefoed is looking to tell powerful, personal stories. family, Koefoed decided that the act of making a “It was a fun challenge to take up a scene that’s so film about what they were going through would be visual and superficial, to dive in and come up with a good process. powerful human stories,” Koefoed says. “That’s what I aim for in a good film – it’s what I was aiming “I’m occupied with those for in Albert’s Winter – to tell a personal story with times when you face universal appeal.” hardships in life. When you leave your innocence behind

and move on in life a wiser For further information about Alberts Vinter / Albert’s person.” Andreas Koefoed Winter, see catalogue in reverse section.

Photo: Mads Emil Hilmer

ANDREAS KOEFOED Born 1979. Denmark. Graduate in documentary direction from the National Film School of Denmark in 2009 and in sociology from Copenhagen University in 2004. Since 2001 produced documentary films in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. His film 12 Notes Down (2008) has received awards and honours at prestigious film festivals worldwide, among them IDFA Amsterdam, Full Frame Durham, Silverdocs AFI and Sheffield DocFest. A Day in the Smoke (2008) was selected for IDFA’s Reflecting Images: Panorama. Albert’s Winter (2009) is selected for CPH:DOX and IDFA’s Short Documentary Competition. Albert’s Vinter Photo: Framegrab PAGE 16 / FILM#67 / NORTHERN LIGHTS / KRISTOFFER KIØRBOE / STUDENT COMPETITION

THE LIGHT WITHIN A journey is a good narrative form, Kiørboe says, because there is a set departure and destination. The northern lights are a much less clear destination than any specific geographical point. “The northern lights are intriguing, because they don’t exist in a static place. I don’t know how you find the northern lights. Maybe they find you. They are as abstract as what the brothers are looking for on an inner level. They are a metaphor for finding the light within. IMAGES You can’t say what that is, either,” Kiørboe says. Nature overall plays an important role in the film. LOUDER THAN WORDS Kiørboe tried to make the physical settings mirror his characters’ inner lives. Simon and Samuel are searching for answers to basic existential questions and that’s reflected in the natural scenery. “My characters somehow or other are looking for God – not necessarily ‘God’ in any religious sense of the word but as ‘something’ greater than us – as meaning, truth or purity. To me, nature represents that ‘something.’ Nature is perfection and purity. It’s a good space for putting people in perspective, because we are not so pure. But we can strive for a kind of purity,” he says.

DISCOVERING THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD Samuel is a grounded character. He just is the way he is. It’s Simon who has a problem with Samuel

Northern Lights Photo: Framegrab being brain damaged. “There’s a lot less order in Simon’s than In Northern Lights, Kristoffer Kiørboe’s intimacy makes him think they need to talk, because Samuel’s world. That’s another reason why the graduation film from the National Film that’s what people do when they want to get to film foregrounds nature the way it does. There’s an School of Denmark, two brothers go in know each other,” Kiørboe says. order to nature that Simon is starting to see. The search of the northern lights, each other In the course of the film, Simon realises that same beauty and glory in the world, he also sees in and themselves. Samuel is brain damaged talking won’t get him closer to his brother. Samuel,” Kiørboe says. and Simon is caught in a struggle between “Words can be lacking, and words are As the film unfolds, we watch the growing helping his older brother or making a life unnecessary in Simon and Samuel’s relationship. intimacy between Simon and Samuel, but Kiørboe for himself. The two brothers have to establish a relationship deliberately aimed not to spell everything out for on a different plane – by experiencing something of the viewer and tie it all up in a pretty bow. by freja dam beauty together, having a snowball fight, being quiet “I like it that the film leaves them somewhere on together, catching each other’s glance or simply the road – that the story isn’t resolved. Simon and Northern Lights is director Kristoffer Kiørboe’s second leaving to find the northern lights,” Kiørboe says. Samuel may not end up sharing their innermost film taking up the theme of brothers. His mid-term secrets with each other, but they are headed in the film, Landscapes, focused on him and his twin brother THE MAGIC OF IMAGES same direction,” Kiørboe says. “They are looking for and their relationship with their father who first came Samuel’s silence naturally limits the film’s dialogue. the light.” into their lives when they were 21 years old. As the But Kiørboe also chose a laconic style because he director sees it, sibling relationships are examples of thinks images, in some types of story, speak a lot For further information about Nordlys / Northern “true love” – love not corrupted by sexuality. louder than words. Lights, see catalogue in reverse section. “I’m interested in love stories,” Kiørboe says. “I’m a fan of images. I believe in what I see more “Relationships between parents and children, than in what’s being said. Films are images and siblings or friends. For me, that type of love has a images can do special things. A certain light can say unique kind of purity.” more than a thousand words,” the director says, striking a blow for aesthetics in documentaries. WORDLESS INTERACTION In some scenes, the director experiments with Two brothers drive through a winter landscape the relationship between images and sound, using in search of the northern lights. In reality they are off-sound of Simon and Samuel’s dialogue in a out to rediscover the intimacy they have lost in the shot of them not speaking, then cutting to a shot passage of time. It’s hard for Simon to get close to where sound and image are in sync. The viewer has his brother Samuel who is brain damaged. He finds to interpret whether the dialogue represents the Photo: Linda Wassberg it frustrating that Samuel can’t sympathize with his characters’ thoughts or whether they are actually KRISTOFFER KIØRBOE life. In one scene Simon probes his brother for a saying what we’re hearing. Born 1979, Denmark. Musician and director in various media and reaction to his leaving for the US to study. Simon “It’s interesting to drop the dialogue and just actor in commercials, short films and TV-series before training at never gets an answer as Samuel is unable to express have their eyes tell the story. It’s fun, too, trying to the National Film School of Denmark, from where he graduated himself verbally. see what they see and having the dialogue function in documentary direction in 2009. His graduation film Northern Lights selected for IDFA’s Student Competition. Ángel is the title Sometimes words fall short, Kiørboe says. as a translation of what their facial expressions are of his pitch for a project which brought him a Special Mention at “I think Simon’s need to talk with his brother is saying,” Kiørboe says. Nordic Talents 2009. Northern Lights (2009) is produced at the a reaction to how he can’t sense him. Their lack of National Film School of Denmark. BOOK OF MIRI / KATRINE PHILP / IDFA STUDENT COMPETITION / FILM#67 / PAGE 17

Philp says. “It’s a question of being visible and making other people aware that we exist. As Miri says, if she died now, who would even notice?”

DOCUMENTING HER LIFE A LIFE ONLINE Ever since she was a child and learned to draw and write, Miri has made drawings of herself and kept a Miri has isolated herself in the real world, she has,” the director says. “It’s a safe and secure diary describing the minutest details of what she had to while generously sharing her thoughts and place. She hardly ever asks anyone in. In her eat and what she was wearing. Now she uses her blog. photos on her blog. Book of Miri, Katrine apartment, and in her blog, she creates her own “It’s a way to document her life,” Philp says. “Of Philp’s graduation film from the National world, where she can be herself.” course she is staging herself, but she tries to show Film School of Denmark, looks at the need herself the way she is. She doesn’t cheat – the clothes for self-staging. CONTROLLED STAGING she wears when she photographs herself are the On her blog, Miri writes about anything, from what clothes she wore that day. It is important for her that BY FREJA DAM she is having for dinner, how she spends her Sunday her images are a window to her life. and what she’s wearing, to more profound problems “She’s really an artist without knowing it,” Philp Miri lives alone with her two cats in a one-room like her relationship to her family. How does it fit says. The director was attracted by Miri’s visual apartment in a small Swedish suburb. But she also together, sharing her innermost feelings with total talent as it comes across in her photographs, and she leads another life: everyday she photographs herself strangers online but being unable to meet people in wanted to bring out the visual elements of body and and writes an entry for her personal blog. Katrine the real world? space in her film. Philp made her graduation film from the National “It’s a matter of control,” Philp says. “Online, Miri Film School of Denmark about Miri, because she has complete control of how she presents herself. GO WITH THE SUBJECT sees her as an example of a seemingly pervasive She can stage herself exactly the way she wants To get that kind of intensity, Philp says, you have to need for self-staging. other people to see her. When she meets people in invest the time it takes to create trust between the “I’m fascinated by the boundary between private real life, she can’t hide in the same way.” filmmaker and her subject. and public and by the nature of this need to expose Miri also blogs to make her mark in a world she “Trust is essential,” she says. “Of course, you’re yourself. How visible do you want to make yourself? does not otherwise feel part of. laying yourself open when you pose in front of a How much are you willing to show?” Philp says. “Miri wants to leave her mark. That’s an camera and put yourself on display. She was always She sees a depth in Miri’s blog that a lot of other existential need, I think, because life is so transient,” playing around with her own bashfulness and how blogs lack. Miri writes personally and honestly. The much she was willing to show, to her own camera as need to express herself is rooted in her loneliness. “Miri wants to leave her mark well as to ours.” “Miri has no one to talk to, and so she has Miri gets in front of the camera every day, but this need to be seen and heard,” Philp says. “Her (...) It’s a question of being it felt transgressive to her to have other people in social needs are met through her participation in visible and making other the room, controlling the camera. To build up her cyberspace. She has a big online circle of people confidence, Philp and Olsson spent a long time who read and comment on her blog.” people aware that we exist. playing around with the camera with her. Miri, who was adopted from Korea as a child, As Miri says, if she died now, “We tested how close up we could go, physically,” always felt like a stranger in the small northern Philp says. “Does she shy away or is she game? You Swedish town where she grew up. who would even notice?” have to feel out your subject on a given day and “A tiny one-room apartment and two cats is all Katrine Philp capture the energy when it’s there. I find it hard to film by template. I have more faith in going with the flow of the film and the subject,” Philp says

For further information about Book of Miri, see catalogue in reverse section.

Photo: Linda Wassberg

KATRINE PHILP Born 1978, Denmark. Former dancer and choreographer, Philp is a graduate in documentary direction from the National Film School of Denmark in 2009 and in film production design from the Danish Design School in 2003. Her documentary film Silence in a Noisy World (2008), produced at the film school, is winner of Rio de Janeiro’s Audience Award. Book of Miri (2009), is produced at the National Film School of Denmark. Book of Miri Photo: Annica Miri Höglund PAGE 18 / FILM#67 / THE RED CHAPEL / MADS BRÛGGER / REFLECTING IMAGES: BEST OF FESTS

The Red Chapel Photo: René Johannsen

year and now edited into a 90-minute documentary produced by Zentropa Rambuk. In September, the DISGUISED AS film won the Best Nordic Documentary Award at the Nordisk Panorama festival in Reykjavik.

COMMUNIST TROUPE ON CULTURAL EXCHANGE COMM UNISTS The goal of Brügger and his crew’s trip was to show the scary true face of the North Korean dictatorship. For 20 days, the reporter Mads Brügger Square in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. But how do you go about doing that in a closed, toured North Korea with two Danish- Right, left, right, left. Endless columns of Koreans tightly controlled country that does everything it Korean comics and a TV crew. Officially, demonstrating against the United States, shouting can to isolate itself from any Western influence? they were a theatrical troupe on cultural slogans, arms and legs rigidly swinging. At the head The Danes pretended to be a communist theatrical exchange. Unofficially, they were peeking of the procession walks a Danish reporter. troupe on cultural exchange. To that end, they had behind the facade of a dictatorship. How The reporter is Mads Brügger and the scene is rehearsed a variety act of roughly 20 minutes to that turned out can be seen in the film from his documentary The Red Chapel. In 2006, perform at North Korea’s national theatre, a showcase version of The Red Chapel, screening in Brügger travelled to North Korea with two comics, of Danish culture meeting the Koreans’ strict IDFA’s Reflecting Images programme. Simon Jul and Jacob Nossell, who were both adopted demands for no ideological or political undertones. from South Korea as infants – Nossell describes Nonetheless, Mrs. Pak, the National Theatre’s director BY LOUISE SKOV ANDERSEN himself as “imported goods” – cracking open the and the Danish delegation’s guide, in no time had hermetically sealed nation in a combination of gutted the script and the act in the end was anything Thousands of fists pump the air with choreographed playacting and satire. The outcome was a TV series, but apolitical or subtle. “One heart, one mind, one precision, as the crowd marches into Kim Il-Sung The Red Chapel, broadcast on DR2 in Denmark that Korea!” Simon Jul was ordered to shout in the closing THE RED CHAPEL / MADS BRÛGGER / REFLECTING IMAGES: BEST OF FESTS / FILM#67 / PAGE 19

uncover the truth about the North Korean state. The series’ blend of black humour and stark gravity quickly made it a cult hit in Denmark. But Brügger’s methods were also criticised in the Danish media. Many expressed their concern that Mrs. Pak and other North Koreans the Danes had mingled with on their trip would be punished now that the troupe had revealed its real mission. Others questioned the ethics of lying to arrive at the truth. For Brügger, whose past work has been labelled “provo-TV,” the answer was unequivocally yes. In fact, he told the Berlingske Tidende newspaper, crossing journalistic lines is important, both to attract viewers and to uncover the truth. “I hope this will open people’s eyes to how awful the existence of North Korea is,” he said. “Indoctrination starts in the cradle. The whole country is like one big cave metaphor, because they don’t know what’s behind the bamboo curtain. They live in an open-air museum managed by Dracula. Many will probably lose their minds when they are confronted with the outside world.”

For further information about The Red Chapel, see

The Red Chapel Photo: René Johannsen catalogue in reverse section.

Brügger’s methods were also criticised in the Danish media. Many expressed their concern that North Koreans the Danes had mingled with on their trip would be punished now that the troupe had revealed its real mission. Others questioned the ethics of lying to arrive at the truth.

Photo: Mads Brügger act. The unkindest cut of all affected Nossell, who has walk at the head of the procession, perhaps in an MADS BRÜGGER cerebral palsy. In North Korea, the physically disabled attempt to prove to the world that the North Korean Danish reporter, writer and TV producer, born 1972. Best known are kept out of sight. Some even claim they are killed. dictatorship has foreign supporters. for his singular style of reporting that has traces of Gonzo and New Journalism and often involves undercover work. An example When the Danes were finally allowed to perform “Jacob, for your sake and mine, I have to lie,” is the Danes for Bush programme that sent Brügger and his their act at the National Theatre, the Danish comic, Brügger whispered, before the crowd swept him away. sidekick Jakob Boeskov to the US during the 2004 election who was 18 at the time, had been reduced to a bit Back at their hotel that night, Brügger and Nossell campaign. Recently Brügger caused a stir with a documentary player. The Koreans even made him pretend to be watched themselves on national TV leading the series, Quatraro Mysteriet, in which he and the TV presenter and concept-maker Mikael Berthelsen investigate the 1993 normal and merely faking it. parade for the “Dear Leader.” “They’re coming to death under mysterious circumstances of European Commission “They help me, they smile at me and they speak get us now,” Brügger thought, as the footage rolled official Antonio Quatraro. Brügger currently hosts Deadline, the to me, but I can feel the contempt they have for me. across the screen. But no one questioned the three serious news flagship of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR. The Red Chapel (2009) IS selected for IDFA’s Reflecting It makes me paranoid,” Nossell says in the film. Danes or their motives. After twenty days of play- Images: Best of Fests. acting they returned to Denmark with rich footage ‘DON’T LIE!’ of day-to-day life under a terror regime. Over their nearly three weeks in Pyongyang, the ZENTROPA Danes were increasingly caught up in the North CULT AND CRITICISM The Red Chapel was produced by Peter Engel for Zentropa Korean propaganda machine. Meanwhile, they had to The TV version of Det Røde Kapel met with both Rambuk, a unit under Zentropa, one of Scandinavia’s largest film companies. Founded in 1992 by director Lars von Trier be careful to keep a straight face and not slip up about fascination and criticism when it was first shown and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen. The company is greatly their real reason for being there. The demonstration on Danish television in 2006. The team behind the acknowledged for having reinvigorated the industry with Dogme in Kim Il-Sung Square was the most extreme instance. series even received threatening phone calls from 95. Zentropa catalogue includes films by Lars von Trier, Lone “Mads, don’t lie,” Nossell panicked from his North Korea. Meanwhile, viewers were glued to Scherfig, Susanne Bier, Annette K. Olesen, Jørgen Leth and many other prominent Danish directors. Mads Brügger’s The Red wheelchair, as the marching crowd approached the tube watching Mads Brügger and his fellow Chapel (2009) selected for IDFA’s Reflecting Images: Best of and the Koreans indicated that the Danes should travellers on their unconventional journey to Fests. www.zentropa.dk PAGE 20 / FILM#67 / INVISIBLE GIRLS / SIDSE STAUSHOLM / IDFA KIDS & DOCS

“I heard a youth researcher say that having friends is one of the most important things for kids in the lowest grades. Kids’ problems more often involve their friends than divorce, alcohol, drugs or violence, as the media would have you believe,” Sidse Stausholm

Invisible Girls Photo: Framegrab CLASSROOM ISOLATION In every school class there are usually two or I thought had real potential to grow,” Stausholm says. “It’s a three kids who experience social isolation. Sidse heavy subject. They are so upset. And it would be really bleak Stausholm’s Invisible Girls follows three girls if the film just left them mired in their problems. So I made an struggling with the loneliness that comes with advance agreement with the girls to film over a long period and having no friends. The film is one of seven in a not abandon them if they were having a hard time.” series of documentaries with the umbrella title At one point, Stausholm grew concerned about where Maiken Coming of Age. was heading. Maiken was being teased in school, but luckily she pulled through. “The great thing about teenagers is they are so BY FREJA DAM full of life. They have wild mood swings. All three girls were on a rollercoaster while we were making the film, but luckily they Usynlige piger tracks three teenage girls, Maria, Maiken and all made it through,” Stausholm says. Photo: Jacob Carlsen Silan, who feel left out in school and are struggling to break SIDSE STAUSHOLM free of their role as outsiders. Loneliness, the director Sidse DEALING WITH IT YOURSELF Born 1977, Denmark. Graduated in Stausholm says, is a vast, all too overlooked problem for Shooting the film, the director realised how hard it is to film journalism from the Danish School children and teens. loneliness. In one case, she asked the girls to chat with each of Journalism, 1999. Signed nine “I heard a youth researcher say that having friends is one other about how they were feeling. Later they recorded some documentary films as director since 2000. Detour to Freedom / Omvej of the most important things for kids in the lowest grades. of their statements as dialogue for animated characters. til Frihed (2001) was nominated at Kids’ problems more often involve their friends than divorce, All three girls have since moved on to other schools. Still, they Odense, Göteborg and selected alcohol, drugs or violence, as the media would have you were nervous up to the film opening about having to confront for First Appearance category at IDFA. The same year Wonderkids, a believe,” Stausholm says. the same kind of derision they had put behind them. They realise series of films to which Stausholm She and the other directors of the Næsten voksen series were that some of their former classmates might take offence, but contributed, received two television out to create some very everyday-type documentaries about they are ready for it. Their primary motivation for doing the film awards. Invisible Girls (2008) ordinary young people. “We didn’t want to seem like shocked was always to help other kids in similar situations. selected for IDFA Kids & Docs programme. grownups. We wanted to meet the kids at their level,” she says. The film shows how hard it is to break a negative pattern and how it’s not always possible to get help from outside. Though Let’s Be Together by Nanna Frank THE LONELINESS TABOO all three girls’ parents are there for them, neither parents nor Møller is also selected for IDFA Kids The director says most people will recognise the feeling of teachers were able to change the mechanisms of a group of & Docs. See reverse section of this issue and FILM#64, page 15. being branded as lonely. “It’s such a taboo,” she says. When she kids in any meaningful way. went looking for her youthful protagonists, she found it was “All three girls came to that realisation. They all found Let’s Be Together and Invisible Girls much easier to get cutters and anorexics to come forward than themselves in situations where they had to step up and deal are produced by Mette Heide, now kids who are “just” lonely. with it themselves,” Stausholm says. of Plus Pictures, and Helle Faber of Bastard Film & TV. Together with “Loneliness is a really hard thing to own up to. It’s not The director hopes that other lonely kids and the people Accidental Terrorist (see page 11 in something you choose. There’s nothing cool about it. It’s just in their lives will see the film and learn from it. “I hope the this issue) these films are three of painful. This was the toughest casting call I was ever involved film will make people realise that it is possible to change your seven in the Coming of Age series, in,” she says. behaviour,” she says. “If we think about our own class in school, the umbrella title for films portraying the lives of young people in Denmark Casting around for her three protagonists, Stausholm was we know who was feeling like this at some point. Maybe it was today. All three titles are found in the resolved not to make a spectacle of them. She deliberately picked us. Sometimes it’s totally random who is left out.” reverse section. girls who had the strength to break out of the role of outsider. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, she says. For further information about Usynlige piger / Invisible Girls, “It was really important for me to work with some girls that see catalogue in reverse section. CPH:DOX 2009 / FILM#67 / PAGE 21 IF I CAN’T DANCE IT’S NOT MY REVOLUTION

An apt choice, emblazoning the cover of this year’s CPH:DOX certain energy and willingness to festival programme with a statement by the anarchist Emma take risks are sometimes lost. I hope Goldman. In seven short years CPH:DOX has grown into the persistent energy and aesthetic Scandinavia’s biggest documentary film festival exactly because courage many of the non-Nordic the organisers have managed to take the festival to the streets participants are bringing to the table while maintaining high artistic ambition and challenging the will be an inspiration.” limits of what documentaries are and can do. This year there is a The participating filmmakers are new and exciting addition to the DOX empire: DOX:LAB very carefully selected and teamed up “We had a great desire to challenge the By Susanna Neimann curators. And there is DOX:FORUM – invited artists on their methods and part market event and part learning lab aesthetics. Most of the filmmakers we There are 200 films, 15 concerts, for producers in alternative distribution picked, because we are already familiar 20 debates and a sea of parties channels for documentaries. with their work and because we and other events on this year’s have great faith in their projects and festival programme. “Political and NEW INITIATIVE: DOX:LAB development potential. We had some provocative, exquisite and essential, This year CPH:DOX is introducing help picking international filmmakers fun and quirky – with an art edge,” a new international talent program, from places where our knowledge is festival director Tine Fischer says. DOX:LAB, combining a talent less well established,” Fischer says. “I think the festival’s profile is workshop with real documentary “We tried to match up the becoming clearer year by year. production. The project has limited filmmakers in ways that allow them We have always tried to test the funds but offers unlimited creative to learn from each other and make boundaries of the documentary by freedom. Top names from the interesting things happen. This could being open to films and works coming international documentary film scene be teaming up filmmakers with from other traditions – art, fiction, will be at hand as instructors. comparable energy and attitude, experimental film. As this year’s The participating filmmakers are like Michael Noer of Denmark and programme very clearly shows, it is paired off, so that Nordic filmmakers Khvan de la Cruz of the Philippines, in these intersections that interesting will be collaborating with their peers or teaming up filmmakers that movements are taking place.” from Burma, the Philippines, China, complement each other because Lebanon, Palestine, Rwanda and their strengths are in different areas. THE CPH:DOX EMPIRE Uganda. For instance, we might match up a The CPH:DOX phenomenon began In workshops and master classes, conceptually strong visual artist with in 2002 and has since sprouted a long the participating filmmakers will a technically proficient filmmaker. line of initiatives and side-projects that receive instruction and sparring “It’s been a lot of fun but also calendar-wise extend far beyond the from top people in international a huge challenge. I hope every 10 hectic days of the festival and whose production. All teams will receive participant will acquire a unique target groups are extremely varied. 40,000 Danish kroner (approx. 5,400 outlook and an international network DOX-ON-WHEEELS sends euros) to produce their films, which they can use in the future,” Fischer documentaries out to the farthest must be finished by June 2010. says in late October, shortly before it corners of Denmark, adding debates, “The idea is to bring filmmakers of all breaks loose. live appearances and other events widely different production cultures to the screening programme. DOC and aesthetic approaches together in ALLIANCE is a partnership between teams of two. This ‘coming together’ five big European documentary is the heart, the entire premise, of the festivals on an online portal providing project,” Fischer says.

access to 250 documentaries. “There are obvious differences in CPH:DOX / 6-15 November 2009 Alongside the festival’s film approaches to production subsidies Founded in 2003, CPH:DOX Copenhagen categories and competitions, attractive and production facilities in the International Documentary Film Festival sub-brands are found, among them different filmmakers’ countries of screens more than 180 documentary films from around the world. During the ten festival days, DOX:EXPANDED and DOX:CLUB, origin. Coming out of a Danish or CPH:DOX organizes five days of professional presenting anything from parties to Nordic production culture, certain seminars and provides an international forum concerts and seminars. standards and requirements generally and meeting place with the newly founded For industry professionals, determine what films are produced. DOX:FORUM. This year the festival’s new international talent program is launching DOX:MARKET gives priority access However, under such professional DOX:LAB, an international talent development to buyers, festival programmers and and formalised subsidy systems, a program for worldwide documentary filmmakers. PAGE 22 / FILM#67 / DREAMS IN COPENHAGEN / MAX KESTNER

COOL COPENHAGEN Dream in Copenhagen Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen

People filmed in a room in an apartment MY CITY problems get only passing mention, though the film in a house on a street in a city. The city, “I was born and raised in Copenhagen,” does briefly touch on the ongoing debate on the future Copenhagen, is the subject of a unique Kestner says. “I have a love affair with the city. of Freetown Christiania and who will define it – still film portrait by Max Kestner, one of Copenhagen’s size is pretty perfect. It’s big enough a political hot potato after a decade of a conservative Denmark’s most outstanding young that you can remain anonymous, but small enough government that inherently cringes at the thought of directors. that you can take it all in at once. And there’s huge an autonomous mess like Christiania, for 38 years now difference from one borough to the next. a hippie capital in the heart of Copenhagen and one of BY KIM SKOTTE “Like a lot of other people, I feel Copenhagen the city’s biggest tourist draws. is my city more than anyone else’s. You get such A few years ago, when the police evicted the The usual thing would be to describe the modern a close relationship to a city you have lived in for squatters from the Youth House on Jagtvej 69, city as a tirelessly pulsating organism buzzing with years. Your memories are tied to its streets. That’s Copenhagen erupted with unheard-of violence. life and activity. High-rises and techno tunes. While where you kissed your first girl. That’s where Were the squatters way off base or was their outrage Max Kestner’s Copenhagen is certainly buzzing with you restlessly wandered the streets when she left partly justified, as their clashes with police turned life and energy, Dreams in Copenhagen is a much you again. Your memories are tied to the city and the streets of Nørrebro into a battleground? Kestner more composite, subtle and poetic portrait of a city accumulate over time,“ Kestner says. doesn’t take sides. In fact, he doesn’t mention the than we are used to seeing. “There are sounds and notes and blackbirds conflict with a single word. But simply has the There are any number of cities beneath the city. chirping when you walk home through the city at camera pan across the empty lot where the Youth Cities of horse-drawn carriages, cobblestones, cow five in the morning,” he says. “Some streets make House once stood, now just a gaping hole between barns and wells. Powdered wigs, prelates and foul me happy, other streets make me sad. One street gutters. All long gone. But if you listen closely, you still people find ugly, but I love. Why is that? Why does sense a city built from old voices and faded pictures. the city affect me so? That was my premise for “There are any number of Many others have lived in the apartment you live making this film.” cities beneath the city. (…) in now, however deeply you consider it your home. Many others have lived in the You can belong to the city with every ounce of your NOT A TOURIST FILM body, but the city is only yours on loan. Clearly, Max Kestner did not spend the last five apartment you live in now, Dreams in Copenhagen is a film about a city, its years working on a tourist film – the Little Mermaid however deeply you consider architecture and the people who live their lives in it, or Tivoli’s marching band are nowhere to be seen. an anti-bombastic urban symphony where today’s Nor is it a history lesson. Copenhagen is captured it your home. You can belong cool Copenhagen meets yesterday’s entrepreneurial in the now. Yet it’s not a polemical anti-idyll of raw to the city with every ounce of spirit and working-class culture, bound together by social realism, pushing a political agenda of street your body, but the city is only an atmospheric score by the Icelandic composer riots, with or without Muhammad cartoons. Jóhann Jóhannsson. A couple of Copenhagen’s most heatedly debated yours on loan.” Max Kestner DREAMS IN COPENHAGEN / MAX KESTNER / FILM#67 / PAGE 23

numbers 67 and 71, an improvised parking lot minimising the influence of accidents on the covered in graffiti and littered with trash. storytelling process. But it’s a fine line. Such hints at the nation’s capital as a political “We didn’t just want facades, but people and arena and battleground are rare in Kestner’s film. facades. People, streets and windows,” Kestner says, Dreams in Copenhagen looks at the city through indicating the whimsical voyeuristic poetry that’s the director’s eyes, revealing Copenhagen in all its such an important part of Dreams in Copenhagen. poetic diversity. A city of everyday people. Buses Catching a glimpse of someone in a window, we and kindergartens, hugs and kisses. Store fronts, immediately begin to imagine what his or her life is avenues, faces, bodies behind windows. How the like. But such stray plot lines are fugitive, unless we light changes with the hours of the day. view the individual people as strokes of light and

shade in a composite portrait of the city’s face. Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen PLANNING AND ACCIDENT The urban space enfolds you in a story that’s greater It’s a gamble that helps lay a historical grid over than your own. the film’s portrait of the city, highlighting the idea “The past is a huge presence when you portray a that the city is a constant, while people come and city,” he says. “But we made a point not to make it out go – are born, grow up and die, actors in a fleeting like everything was better in the old days. Though shadow play on the ancient stage of the city. One many of the memories about the city are personal, day everyone eventually takes his or her last walk this is not a nostalgic film. The movement is always in the city. Other shadows will follow. Happy kids, forward.” Kestner points to the many architects busy grownups, stooped-over old people will pass who appear in the film – architects in their studios, by workers’ tenements from the 1930s, patrician discussing and planning the landscape of tomorrow. mansions from the 1700s and the still soulless new buildings in Copenhagen’s spanking new districts, Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen where architects and construction workers stride, “From the outset the film was intended to be a conducting procedures in hardhats and with eagle portrait focusing on architecture in brick-and- eye amid construction noise and dust. Prestigious mortar Copenhagen. Documentary portraits are construction projects in raw concrete and daring, plentiful, because we are intrinsically interested swooping lines one day, too, will be patinaed with in other people, but also because the method people’s joys, sorrows, daily routines and, of course, is so convenient. If you just keep observing a their Copenhagen dreams person long enough, you will eventually have enough scenes for a portrait. The same is true for For further information about Drømme i København a city. The kaleidoscopic method is a good fit for / Dreams in Copenhagen, see catalogue in reverse documentaries.” section. Photo: Henrik Bohn Ipsen

“It was always a film about architecture,” he says, GROUND RULES “but only in a certain sense. I always knew I wasn’t To define how the film would depict the many smart enough to tell architects anything about people in the city, Kestner laid down certain ground architecture, so the film isn’t full of critical themes rules. People couldn’t have chronological stories. about architecture. They could appear more than once in the film. They “But, like a lot of people, I am interested in city could be established as characters. Their lives could planning. We should take good care of the city, but touch and intersect, but they should never develop we also need to develop it. And that’s a challenge. into continuing stories with any kind of suspense. So the film needed some architects, though not so How did their jobs or their love affairs work out? many that it got out of hand. I wanted the film to There’s no room for that. respect that urban architecture is also made by the In terms of the photography, Kestner made a hotdog vendor on the corner, by how we use the city. basic decision never to show a person without also Whether we bike or drive, for instance, has a massive including the city in the frame. impact on the city’s appearance,” Kestner says. “If we were in an interior, we had to shoot against “Architects plan the city, but a lot of things can’t the window to show the city outside,” he says. “If we be planned. It’s kind of like John Lennon’s famous did an outside shot looking in a window, we had to line that life is what happens to you while you’re show the wall of the building around the window. A busy making other plans. People are what happen to person couldn’t just be someone with a problem or a Photo: Steen Møller Rasmussen the city and architects’ designs. People living their situation. A person here is seen to be in a room in an lives changes all their fancy plans. Life lived is full of apartment in a building on a street in a city.” MAX KESTNER quirks and accidents.” There were other, more radical, decisions as Born 1969. Graduated in documentary from the National Film well. “We had to decide where to put the focus or School of Denmark, 1997. Lecturer at the National Film School VOYEURISTIC POETRY sharpness,” Kestner says. The film is shot in 35 mm. of Denmark. Worked for DR TV, where he made Partiet / The Party (2000) and Supergeil (1997-1998). Rejsen på ophavet / “We wanted to do a multi-plot story, though the “We decided to put the focus not on the people but Max by Chance (2004) was chosen for First Appearance at IDFA plot could never dominate. The main thing had on the city. That is, people can come into focus, if Amsterdam and received a GulDok for Best Short Documentary to be that the individual scenes were attractive,” they are standing by the front of a building, on a at CPH:DOX, 2004. His Verden i Danmark / The World in Denmark (2007) received a Danish Robert for Best Short Film. the director says. He never made it a secret that balcony or close to a window. Buildings are always 2009: Drømme I København / Dreams in Copenhagen, an anti- his documentaries contain a powerful element in sharp focus. People are out of focus a lot of the bombastic urban symphony, selected for CPH:DOX competition of staging. Real life is hard to plan when you’re time. This is to hold on to the fact that it’s a portrait for Best Documentary. making a documentary. Having faith in the power of a city. Sure, we could have chosen to put people of accidents, even positing accidents as a principle, in focus – that’s certainly the convention – but we UPFRONT FILMS / www.upfrontfilms.dk paradoxically, is a really strong argument for decided to take a risk in this case.” See page 4. PAGE 24 / FILM#67 / MY FATHER FROM HAIFA / OMAR SHAGAWI

Director Omar Shagawi with his father Munir Shagawi in the background. Photo: Omar Shargawi MY PALESTINIAN DAD

As a child, every time director Omar Shargawi made his directorial debut in 2008 with my wanting him to tell his story. I wanted to delve Shargawi asked his father about his life the critically acclaimed feature film Go with Peace into his psyche and find out why he reacts the way and his family’s flight from Palestine Jamil. His documentary is propelled by a wish to he does. What’s at the root of his personality, his in 1948, his father invariably closed up. understand his father and his father’s pain. By turns character and his mood swings, his sorrow and his After he became a filmmaker, Shargawi touching and funny, the film depicts the close, but pain, which I always knew was there and which has vowed to get his father to tell his story in hardly untroubled, relationship between father and marked me and the rest of my family.” a documentary. My Father is from Haifa son, and the son’s struggle to convince his father to turned out to be a therapeutic process return to Haifa and visit his childhood home for the UNWILLING SUBJECT that allowed the director to explore his first time since he fled there with his family. Shargawi and his brothers were, so to speak, fed the own roots, too. “It was always in me that we never made that Palestine-Israel question with their mother’s milk. It’s trip, that he never picked us up and took us there,” an issue the family has to live with for good and ill. “I BY CHRISTIAN MONGAARD Shargawi says. The director filmed his father for five was interested in finding out why I feel the same way years but only got him to go Syria and Israel this my father does about so many things, though I never Munir Shargawi, the father of filmmaker Omar May. “Still that was less my premise than how I had shared his experiences,” Shargawi says. “You could Shargawi, was eight years old in 1948 when he fled never really got to know his story. I only knew the say it was therapeutic, because I was also digging with his family from Haifa in Palestine to Syria, shortly bare bones of his background: that he fled Palestine into my own roots and background. I didn’t know before the state of Israel was founded. Growing up in in 1948, grew up in Syria and ended up in Denmark. where the feelings I had came from. It couldn’t just Syria, Munir Shargawi arrived in Denmark in 1967, That was it. be because my father was always talking about these where he married a Danish woman and had three sons. “Every time I asked him about his life when things. I almost feel like it’s genetic. So the film is a Though Omar’s father made Denmark his adopted I was growing up, he always just shut down and parallel study of him and me.” homeland, he carried in him a pain and a longing that didn’t want to talk about it. The only details I knew Shargawi started filming interviews with his was transmitted to his sons. my mother had told me. So the film came out of father, who was sometimes a rather unwilling MY FATHER FROM HAIFA / OMAR SHAGAWI / FILM#67 / PAGE 25

subject. He had to catch him at the right moment, around for the house where he used to live, everyone Returning to his childhood home has not changed so the film is shot on DV, mobile phones, HD came over to talk with him, Jews and Palestinians. He Munir Shargawi’s nature or reconciled him with the and 16 mm, sometimes even using a concealed made friends with everyone in no time. Within a day, past. “But something has changed,” Shargawi says. camera. Making a virtue out of necessity, Shargawi everyone knew that there was a Palestinian who had “Now he knows what it’s really going there. It’s no highlighted the uniquely cinematic look of all the returned. They weren’t used to that, neither the Jews longer just an idea of a place. Palestine always meant different formats. And he always told his father nor the Arabs there, and they were all interested in a lot to him, but he never went back there, and I when he had been secretly filming him. hearing his story,” Shargawi says. feel he’s found some sort of closure, though I also “By and by I got the idea that it would be fun to Nor is Munir Shargawi your typical Palestinian. In think he’s still dealing with it. We made the trip in visit the house in Haifa – if it was still there and we his view, Palestinians aren’t just victims, they’re idiots, May and, curiously, we haven’t really talked about could find it. I started asking him to make the trip because, unlike the Jews, they have been unable to it that much since we came back. But that’s our with me, and just getting him accustomed to the change their situation. In one of the film’s funnier relationship in a nutshell. We don’t sit around and idea was a long and hard process. The subject had sequences, he says that if he was a young man today, talk about it afterwards – how does he feel, how do I never been discussed before. The trip then became he would marry an Israeli girl. “When Arab marries feel? None of that.” the impetus for the project. Nothing that happened Arab, the hash clubs result,” he says. For Shargawi personally, the Haifa trip was before we left was planned or designed or scripted. “That’s also why it was so interesting for me to not only a good experience he shared with his It was all about keeping the camera rolling. I filmed make this film,” Shargawi says. “If my father were father, it also gave him a new homeland. “I’m not a non-stop for five years, which also put a strain on just a beaten man who sat around complaining hundred percent sure what the trip gave me – I’m our relationship, of course.” about his situation all day, going ‘Jews and Israelis still processing it,” he says. “Mainly, I shared a good are to blame for all my misery,’ he would be a lot experience with my dad that I would not have had REPRESENTING A GENERATION less interesting to portray. That angle has been otherwise. That we did this together gives me a Over the course of the project, Munir Shargawi, covered so often it sounds like a lament to a lot sense of peace and joy that I will be able to draw on 69 – a temperamental, bright and often very funny of people. What was exciting was that he both at dark moments. There’s a sense of satisfaction that acquaintance – changed his mind about the trip represented his generation and had these opinions we did this. That it wasn’t just a thought – ‘Imagine several times. His health is an issue, something you don’t expect to hear from a Palestinian. He doing that!’ We really did it, and it gives me a warm is always getting in the way. “I was trying to doesn’t say the things we are used to hearing.” feeling when I think about it. I also feel this is a place understand this struggle inside of him,” Shargawi I would like to return to – even if it is difficult to says. “Why the resistance? I always knew that, in his NO LONGER JUST A NOTION get there and a difficult place to be – mentally, too. heart of hearts, he had a desire to go back. But why Now that father and son have visited Haifa, their My mother is Danish and I was born in Denmark. is it so hard for him to do?” relationship has calmed down a bit Shargawi says. Denmark is my country, but something down there This is a crux of the film. The filmmaker wasn’t just “Now we don’t have to discuss it or fight about it is tugging at me. I belong there, too.” interested in telling his father’s story, he wanted to anymore. I sometimes feel it as an absence that we tell the story of his father’s whole generation. “What don’t have that to talk about anymore. It bonded us, is it that hurts so badly that they don’t go to Palestine? having this joint mission. It was his mission, too, even For further information about Fra Haifa til Nørrebro / When we finally did go to Haifa and were looking as he changed his mind about it so many times.” My Father from Haifa, see reverse section.

“I was interested in finding out why I feel the same way my father does about so many things, though I never shared his experiences,” Omar Shagawi

OMAR SHAGAWI Born 1974, Denmark. Raised by his Danish mother and Palestinian father in Copenhagen. Self-taught director, working previously as a still photographer. Shargawi made his debut as director with the feature film Gå med fred Jamil – Ma salama Jamil / Go with Peace Jamil (2008) and was rewarded generously at several international festivals – winning the VPRO Tiger Award in Rotterdam, the Church Prize and FIPRESCI Award in Göteborg, Best Director in Transylvania and the Grand Prix at Warsaw. 2009: From Haifa til Nørrebro / My Dad is from Haifa selected for CPH:DOX competition for Best Documentary.

ZENTROPA See page 19 / www.zentropa.dk Munir Shargawi with two of his three sons, Omar and Rune Photo: Family album PAGE 26 / FILM#67 / OUT OF LOVE / BIRGITTE STÆRMOSE

Out of Love Photo: Marek Septimus Wieser

overcome her project’s many language and culture barriers. Together they interviewed 11 street kids based on a far-ranging list of questions about the kids’ everyday concerns as well as their memories about the war. “I didn’t want the film to be about the children’s personal situations, and I definitely did not want to OBSERVATION make it about feeling sorry for them,” Stærmose says. “This process involved finding ways to go against the sense of pity these kids initially evoke in you. Pity is TO CONSTRUCTION one way of relating to them – it’s a way of protecting yourself. Of course, you feel sorry for them and they It’s okay for a documentary to stage out of reality, while also putting reality to good are victims, but I didn’t see the point in making a film reality – any documentary will always be a use.” During the festival, Stærmose struck up a about that. I wanted the film to deal with the human personal interpretation of reality anyway, partnership with a local filmmaker and he suggested aspects of what was going on inside of them. Birgitte Stærmose says. In Out of Love, the making a film about the local street kids. The idea “The questions concerned both their day-to-day first documentary by this award-winning immediately appealed to the Danish director. lives and their memories. The stories that are in the fiction director, Kosovar-Albanian street “I liked the idea of working with kids in the city,” film are the stories they told us. Precisely because kids in richly atmospheric locations recite she says. “I wanted to do a film with testimonials they are kids, their memories are really interesting. monologues about their lives, memories by them as they walk through some of the amazing Children tend to notice other things than grownups and the challenges they face. places in the city, as a way of letting us experience do. They don’t have the same filters. They just fragments of their everyday life. I have done work see something and register it. Their memories BY EVA NOVRUP REDVALL before interviewing people and staging the interview were a way to get some images of a war I hadn’t material, both on stage and film. It’s an interesting experienced. Also, it was a way to get other, more The feeling of an almost too-real reality convinced procedure, because it comes with a number of interesting, images than we usually get from the Birgitte Stærmose to try her hand at documentaries. limitations but also allows for some liberties. news media.” In 2005, she had been invited to sit on a jury at a “I had no desire to do a more traditional film festival in Kosovo and got her first experience documentary. That doesn’t interest me, and perhaps SHARED EXPERIENCE of life in a post-war country. So many places and I don’t have the patience for it, either. To do that, Once Stærmose had her interview material, she landscapes there had a mood of secrecy about them you need to be interested in being in a situation got the idea to ask the playwright and screenwriter that fascinated her. and observing it for a long time. I would rather Peter Asmussen to write monologues for the “I have always been interested in things that compose something from my observations,” the kids, based on their statements. Stærmose was are secret. Pristina is a place that people can’t director says. working on another project with Asmussen at the leave, and no one goes there without a special time and she sensed that he would be able to give errand,” Stærmose says. “That makes for a heady CHILDREN’S MEMORies the material a lift by transforming the interview atmosphere. I was an outsider and everything In 2007 Stærmose returned to Kosovo to talk with statements into more literary texts. seemed extremely real to me while I was there. To a number of street kids. Her partnership with the “Peter is good at writing big words and I wanted me that was a very ‘documentary feeling’ and I got local filmmaker had deteriorated in the meantime the kids to be making big statements,” Stærmose the urge to work with that in a staged form of some and instead she got together with another local says. “That was part of the construction. They should kind, making a film that can lift that atmosphere filmmaker, Kaltrina Krasniqi, who would help her be saying things that were greater than their own OUT OF LOVE / BIRGITTE STÆRMOSE / FILM#67 / PAGE 27

“I didn’t want the film to be about the children’s personal situations, and I definitely did not want to make it about feeling sorry for them (…) I wanted the film to deal with the human aspects of what was going on inside of them.”

For further information about Ønskebørn /

Out of Love Photo: Marek Septimus Wieser Out of Love, see catalogue in reverse section. words, because something greater is involved. Only is to use a wide-angle lens to go super close up and their inability to express themselves gets in the way. achieve a sense of physical proximity to the kind The monologues would amplify something real that of kids you usually don’t get close to,” the director usually has a documentary feel. The language should says. “We saw we had lovely sequences of kids just be literate and narrative and rich in imagery but not looking into the camera. Moreover, we deliberately irrelevant to them, because it builds on their stories. worked with the feeling of being close to someone “The monologues also help shatter the when they aware that you’re looking. We had no impression that the children were telling their own urge to be observational. The film is very tightly private stories,” she says. “I was never interested in composed. I was inspired in part by Roy Andersson presenting any one child’s personal experience in and his use of long takes. When you hold a frame the film. What I was interested in was their shared that long, there has to be something there. So you experience and their shared situation. Everyone is have to carefully arrange and stage the shot.” telling everyone’s story. They have a shared history, and their stories have a lot of characteristics in I’M THE ONE TELLING SOMEBODY SOMETHING common.” Very few of the kids ended up telling their own stories. Stærmose put children and monologues WILLING REALITY together, and the kids were paid to be in the film. In the film’s monologues the children talk about Stærmose made it a point to have a clear agreement Photo: Jan Buus everything from their after-school work selling that the kids were there to do a certain piece of cigarettes in the streets to their experience of work. BIRGITTE STÆRMOSE returning to Pristina as small children after the war: “The kids are participating in something that’s Born 1963, Denmark. M.F.A. in Film and Media Arts from Temple how watching TV suddenly became meaningless, mine,” she says. “I put them in situations that I made University in Philadelphia. Her previous work includes the award- winning short films Now, Look at Me (2001), Small Avalanches how the tall grass growing between bombed-out up. I choose what they say. I have met documentary (2003), Letters from Denmark (2006), Principles of Attraction buildings provided a semblance of paradise, how filmmakers who say it’s more interesting to hear (2006) and Sophie (2006). Small Avalanches was nominated they sensed their feeling of worthlessness. They what the children want to say. I know what they for the UIP Prize for Best European Short at the European Film speak directly to the camera, sometimes in an want to say: they don’t want to say anything. Awards. Sophie was screened in competition at Sundance, selected for New Directors/New Films and awarded the ARTE intimate whisper. Sometimes they are alone, Nothing! I want to tell you something, but they don’t prize. Stærmose is currently in development on her debut sometimes they are with other people. want to tell you anything. They are not interested. feature. Ønskebørn / Out of Love is her first documentary. “The idea always was to have the kids be in real I didn’t make this film for the children’s sake or to situations and have them say things no one would give them a voice.” ALPHAVILLE PICTURES COPENHAGEN APS ever say in that kind of situation. It shifts the balance “As a director, you should acknowledge the Founded 2003 by director Christoffer Boe and producer Tine of what we expect. This isn’t the kind of film that fact that you’re making a film, that it’s something Grew Pfeiffer, both graduates of the National Film School of purports to have serendipitously caught something you want to do,” Stærmose says. “In that sense, it’s Denmark. Collaboration started earlier with their first feature on camera. The film acknowledges that we shaped a narcissistic project more than it’s about other film Reconstruction (2003, produced by Nordisk Film), which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the reality. We willed reality to conform to our design: people. Sure, a film can deal with a worthy issue and FIPRESCI award for Director of the Year. The first productions this is exactly how it had to be,” Stærmose says. you can take a journalistic approach, but when you carrying the company name are Allegro (Christoffer Boe, 2005), “My cameraman Marek Wieser and I put a lot of make a film you need to acknowledge that’s what and the experimental, low-budget film project entitled Off Screen work into the visuals. Also, we really benefited from you’re doing. You are making a film. You need to (2006). The film won the Altre Visioni Award in Venice. Titles 2009/2010: the documentary Ønskebørn / Out of Love by having a casting session with the kids. We saw how own up to the fact that you’re the one who wants to Birgitte Stærmose and the feature film Everything Will be Fine interesting it is when they whisper, how exciting it tell somebody something.” (working title), by Christoffer Boe. PAGE 28 / FILM#67 / MIRROR / JOACHIM LADEFOGED

BODY SCULPTURE Mirror Photo: Joachim Ladefoged

Mirror zooms in on the body and the extreme this case the story demanded a high aesthetic level. I originally changes some people put themselves through. wanted to include some of my stills in the film, but that didn’t Internationally acclaimed still photographer work. And because I didn’t want to lose the advantage of Joachim Ladefoged makes the leap to moving photographs – that you can look at them for a long time – we pictures in Mirror, a hyper-aesthetic, wordless decided to do the film in slow motion, which gives people time 10-minute film about bodybuilders, unfolding in to study the shots. We also dropped the original sound. So the epic slow-motion. film ended up being very aesthetic and compressed reportage. Consequently, it has a natural time limit – it would be too much BY ANDERS BUSK of a good thing if it went on for 30 minutes.”

Described by its director as an “art documentary,” Mirror FROM INDIVIDUALIST TO TEAM PLAYER Photo: Joachim Ladefoged is the third and final instalment in Joachim Ladefoged’s Usually travelling the world as a loner with a camera bag over project about bodybuilding in Scandinavia, following a JOACHIM LADEFOGED his shoulder, to make Mirror Ladefoged had to be part of a Born 1970, Denmark. Professional book and a photo exhibition that toured several European team. He had to change certain habits accordingly, but overall photographer since 1991. cities. As a photographer, Ladefoged is best known for his it was a gift. “I knew what scenes I wanted to include, like the Member of the international photo photojournalism from Albania in the late 1990s and for his one of the competitors oiling up, posing in front of mirrors cooperative, VII. Ladefoged has powerful, disturbing shots from the war in Kosovo. won a number of awards, among and comparing themselves to one another,” Ladefoged says. them the prestigious World Press Visually, he is fascinated by bodybuilders’ extremely “I wanted shots of their bulging veins and their concentration Photo and Picture of the Year sculpted bodies. As a filmmaker, he is fascinated by the before going on stage, and I had a madly skilled team to USA. His work has embellished The New Yorker, The New York personalities of people who lift up to 25 tons of weights help me do that. That allowed me to focus on the details Times Magazine, Newsweek every morning to build up a body that is beautiful to some – controlling the light source, for instance, to give a new and Time. Author of two books: and repugnant to others. “In most sports, the practitioners can dynamic to a static subject.” Albanians, 2000, and Mirror, measure themselves on something specific,” Ladefoged says. 2008, the latter leading to his film debut: Mirror (2009), an art MY VOYEURISM — THEIR NARCISSISM “A 100-meter sprinter has his stopwatch. A weightlifter has documentary which examines the his kilos. But bodybuilders only have their mirrors. Hence the Ladefoged’s film is about the human body, not just about sport of bodybuilding. title of my project, Mirror.” Documenting this struggle with, bodybuilders – though he does find them amazingly and against, one’s own mirror image was one of the director’s photogenic. In a way, the film’s fascination of bodily extremes BASTARD FILM ambitions for the film. could have focused on people with anorexia. “But, is that For information on Bastard Film, really okay to do?” he says. “It’s an interesting question. As it is, refer to page XX. AESTHETICS TELL THE STORY bodybuilders are controversial to a lot of people.” Ladefoged first started photographing bodybuilders at the This basic fascination with people expressing themselves Danish championships in 2001. The idea to document the so adamantly through the medium of their own bodies has scene in moving pictures, too, came to him during long hours a special resonance with Ladefoged. For 20 years he was spent waiting with the bodybuilders for their one or two- prevented from doing anything too radical with his own body minute poses. Ladefoged had brought a small Sony camcorder due to the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. It is only in recent and, suddenly finding himself with 10 seconds of film of a years that he has even been able to do sports. So, Mirror is also “The project is ripped bodybuilder moving through space with unbelievable his attempt to dig beneath the surface and examine what really grace, he knew that he would never be able to capture goes on inside the heads of these posing, slickly oiled men and as much about anything like it in stills. women. “The project is as much about my voyeurism as it is my voyeurism as The challenge now lay in achieving the aesthetic level of about their narcissism,” he says it is about their photographs in the film format. “Most documentaries are shot like shit,” Ladefoged says. “The grainy journalistic look has its For further information about Mirror, see catalogue in reverse narcissism,” charms but not all the time. Aesthetics help tell the story, and in section. Joachim Ladefoged FLOODED MCDONALD’S / SUPERFLEX / FILM#67 / PAGE 29

The interior of McDonald’s after the deluge. Photo: Ha Thuc Phu Nam

familiarity, the McDonald’s interior is in fact both the whole world and anywhere in the world. This is essentially how brands operate. And Superflex has a very special relationship to brands: their own name sounds and effectively functions as one. In a number of their works– the best known apocalypse is their engagement with Guaraná beverage – they have rendered activism thematic along with the pervasive theme of rebellion in a world where technologies that are crucial to people’s survival are frequently turned into objects for commercial monopolization. Their biogas system in Africa is also part and parcel of this praxis: the beverage WOW being a fight against Coca-Cola and the biogas being A McDonald’s burger bar without any customers or staff present, gradually floods one aspect of a more self-help-oriented approach. with water. As the water rises the food and furniture begin to float around, the lights With works like Free Beer, from 2005, Superflex and electrics short circuit and darkness falls, all while the cameras roll registering has been prodding art as a discussion about open underwater and above water. The Danish artist collective Superflex’ Flooded Mc source or free access. Here we have items of Donald’s is screening at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. merchandise from a supermarket which, together with a recipe, constitute a potential microbrewery. BY ANDERS KOLD The point, however, is also that the art work is “We live at a time when the narrative about what is possible: an image There is something dreadfully wrong at the outset apocalypse has become representing a process. With Flooded McDonald’s, and in the end, the whole thing goes down in a theme. Before, it was the commodities are down from the shelves, and a Titanic-like way. French fries, chairs and the the whole mess is sailing around aimlessly without characteristic packaging are floating around within something occult, something the protection of the brand the pallid-turbid stream that the world has become preachers on someway-out TV after the water’s inexplicable rise. The film Flooded McDonald’s, 2008, subscribes channel might talk about, but SUPERFLEX / WWW.SUPERFLEX.NET Superflex was founded in 1993 by Rasmus Nielsen, Jakob Fenger to basic cultural tales: the Flood, or the Apocalypse, now it’s the REAL apocalypse and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, all graduates of the Royal Danish as well as to a modern horror scenario related to – climate change etc.” Academy of Art. They have left their mark on a number of national the thawing out of the poles. However, it’s not like and international projects, actively penetrating social and political in the Hollywood movies, where there’s an easily Superflex, Louisiana Revy, 50, no.1. structures. Examples are Supergas (1997), a biogas installation which functions as a sustainable energy source for a family in a grasped and neat little story to hold onto. developing country. Superchannel (1999) is a viewer-particpating The artists have refrained from a dramatizing We meet a standard interior in the global fast TV channel. Free Beer (2005) applies modern free software open soundtrack and rejected any other kind of human food franchise, McDonald’s: actually a hand-built source methods to a traditional real-world product – beer. intervention – it all just happens! And of course, model in full scale. Few global brands have been as This article is written on the occasion of the exhibition “This nothing is more anxiety-provoking than the subject to rage as McDonald’s when anti-capitalism World is Yours” curated by Anders Kold at the Louisiana incomprehensible’s sudden appearance within the demonstrations take place. But even if Superflex Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. The film Flooded recognizable world which we had been thinking all are generally on the side of reality in their artistic McDonald’s is shown at Louisiana until 10 January 2010. along was practically and commercially fitted out for practice, this particular piece, in all its non-edification, Flooded McDonald’s was shot in the bottom of a swimming the delight and the benefit of all of us. We live and is a much broader statement. The artists themselves pool in Thailand. The production was supported by the Danish learn, though. My world forms part of yours! call it a symbolic movie, because despite its extreme Film Institute. PAGE 30 / FILM#67 / DFI FILM COMMISSIONER / JESPER JACK / INTERVIEW

to further discuss what documentaries really are. As it is, the simple notion that documentaries can have an ideal beyond realism is still news to some people. “I want to support a development where we communicate not only in words, facts and issues METHOD but also in images and moods, starting early on in + the process. We are different from journalists and reporters, because we are interested not only in a good story but also, to an extreme degree, in how that story is told,” Jack says. And, he emphasizes, this is about a lot more PRECISION + than aesthetics. “You can’t just stick cool images on at the end. The images are at least as important in the conceptual phase as the story or the subject, etc. When people come to see me, I want to know how they envision their film visually and sensually STRINGENCY – I don’t just want to hear their thoughts and arguments. Sometimes we might leaf through some of the photo books I keep stacked on my shelf. I’m a Documentaries should subvert our storyteller’s own material. The challenge, then, is strong proponent of visual armament,” he says. understanding of reality and, doing so, knowing how to reject a highly personal project If there’s one thing Jack is sick of discussing it’s they should insist on their own version without also rejecting the person behind the project.” the issue of what constitutes objective truth. “That of reality, Jesper Jack says. The Danish But a film consultant’s role is not all about giving discussion should be over by now,” he says. “As Film Institute’s new film commissioner qualified replies to applications and providing science has shown us, you can’t measure anything for shorts and documentaries is urging coaching from the earliest development through without also affecting it – you always become part documentary filmmakers to think in to a film’s premiere, you also have to relate to the of what you observe. That’s a well-known fact images and moods, not just issue. future viability of documentaries. everywhere except in the daily press. Indeed, they By Jesper Jack “We have to think in terms of new financing still want to know if anything was cut out.” and distribution opportunities for the future,” Jack “Yes. Of course we cut things out. Films are a BY anders busk says. “TV will not continue to be the main mass subjective reality, but that doesn’t preclude taking medium. As we lose access to the broad audience responsibility for that reality. You can’t lose your There is a Kierkegaard quote posted on the door to we get via the public service channels, we risk losing credibility, and you can’t just get sloppy and hide Jesper Jack’s office. Most people would have picked something quite fundamental: the ability to inform under the cover of art. But documentaries shouldn’t a single inspirational line or two, but Jacks’ selection everyone, which is an essential prerequisite of a be chasing an outdated concept of objective truth or takes up almost a full page. This might go some way parliamentary democracy.” be compelled to relate to certain implied parameters toward explaining the philosophy of the Danish Jack’s ideas in part involve ways to meet the thereof,” Jack says. Film Institute’s new documentary film consultant: audience where they are today. He tries to view “By responsibility I mean, you can’t just let the keep simple things simple, sure, but remember that a film as part of an “activity package” where the camera roll and call what you get on tape the truth. complex things are by definition complex. film contributes its subjective artistic expression, Then you’re enormously dependent on chance, and The role of a film consultant is complex. It takes while Web and mobile media distribute facts and your preceding analysis doesn’t make it into the film the realisation that you’re not always smartest and communicate interactively. at all,” he says. “You need to make room for reflection, don’t always know best. As Kierkegaard put it, in the “There will be an increasing movement the and that’s done through editing and staging.” quote on Jack’s door, “... to help is a willingness for other way, so that the Web is the first platform the time being to put up with being in the wrong that generates hype and maybe even makes a CHALLENGING THE CONSENSUS and not understanding what the other person creative contribution, too. Ideally, a film should Jack’s ambitions, moreover, go beyond visual understands.” be communicating actively with the audience. It’s armament and increased attention to form. In terms Jesper became a film consultant in June and is a question of getting out the information on the of content, he has also been doing some thinking already feeling at home in his new job. “What’s so media where it works best,” Jack says. about where Danish documentaries should be great about this job is you get to be enthusiastic “And, of course, we need to develop storytelling heading. about the things you’re working on – while also forms to fit the new media,” he says. “The medium “Danish filmmakers are extremely ambitious knowing that everything can always be even better.” obviously has an enormously impact on a film’s and there’s a tendency to think that geographic narrative language – there’s a huge difference distance – sometimes a very great distance – is KEEPING DOCUMENTARIES VIABLE between watching a film in the cinema or at home required to go beyond the local Danish market Jack is a graduate of the National Film School and he on your TV.” and make the international festivals. True, an has taught there as well. Consequently, he knows a international outlook is a good thing. We need to do lot of the people who are now applying to the DFI OBJECTIVITY AND RESPONSIBILITY for funds through him. And, because he will end up While Danish documentaries are in a groove right ”When people come to see also rejecting applications – that’s part of the job – now, Jack points out that classic documentaries – he has to be extremely vigilant in upholding a clear subjectively experienced depictions of reality – are me, I want to know how they boundary between the person and the project. under great pressure. Some of that pressure comes envision their film visually “It’s incredibly important for a consultant to from the journalistic requirements for a certain and sensually – I don’t just distinguish between the film and the filmmaker,” level of accuracy or objectivity. But, Jack contends, Jack says. “The National Film School’s documentary these requirements do not necessarily apply to want to hear their thoughts programme operates on the basic philosophy that documentaries. and arguments. … I’m a all stories, to some extent, are about the storyteller “It’s a problem that it’s become hard to distinguish himself or herself – that the stories are a kind documentary journalism from the kind of strong proponent of visual of conscious or unconscious projection of the documentaries we try to support,” he says. “We need armament,” Jesper Jack DFI FILM COMMISSIONER / JESPER JACK / INTERVIEW / FILM#67 / PAGE 31

a lot more co-productions and creative partnerships with other countries. But we also need to have faith that the country we’re in is interesting. Denmark has undergone rapid cultural change in a few short years. Our values have changed dramatically and perhaps our self-image as a socially liberal, open- minded and tolerant people needs updating. That self-image might be worth looking at,” he says. That kind of inquiry would be a perfect match for the documentary genre, and that’s exactly Jack’s point. “What’s so great about documentaries is they foster empathy and enable us to experience the world through someone else’s eyes. That’s where a subjective depiction really makes sense: it makes us smarter – about the world and about ourselves,” Jack says. “Challenging our self-image – films can do that, make us see things we see every day with fresh eyes. Films can challenge the consensus. We always need that – maybe more so now than ever. In fact, it’s striking how few qualified depictions we see of Denmark today.” In general, Jack’s ambition for the documentary genre calls for films that challenge convention and automatic, habitual thinking – extending to the genre’s own clichés. “In Denmark, there has been a focus on classical dramaturgy and that’s part of the reason why Danish documentaries have been so successful. On the flipside, the films risk becoming cookie-cutter-like, because they all follow the same dramaturgical model,” Jack says. “Moreover, there is a tendency – maybe originating from the National Film School – to approach all subjects from a psychological angle. Psychological films are effective, because they speak to the emotions, but they also contain a schema. For the sake of argument, it is possible for someone to become a political activist without having had a domineering father. We should always be trying to break free from schematic, established models of explanation.” “Documentaries should subvert our understanding of reality. That doesn’t happen by casting around arbitrarily manner but by thinking about method, precision and stringency before you begin,” Jack says. “Editing can’t cover up a lack of thinking.”

JESPER JACK Born 1969, Denmark. Having been a world traveller, journalist and political activist, Jack graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 1997. Became an EAVE producer in 2008. Formerly a lecturer at the Film School and a tutor at EDN and 12 for the Future, Jack is a documentary development consultant with experience. Jack has directed, edited, developed and produced numerous documentaries. Together with Henrik Veileborg, he produced the duology Love on Delivery, IDFA Silver Wolf nominee and winner of Odense’s Audience Award, and Ticket to Paradise, won a Special Mention at CPH:DOX. Produced the festival hit Side by Side (2008), a Toronto Hot Docs International Spectrum nominee and winner of a Special Mention at Nordic Panorama; and Restless in Paradise (2009), which recently opened to critical acclaim. Together with Henrik Veileborg and Anna-Maria Kantarius he produced two films from the Cities on Speed-series: Mumbai Disconnected and Bogotá Change, both are selected for IDFA’s Reflecting Images: Panorama. Portrait of Jesper Jack, DFI Film Commissioner Photo: Miriam Dalsgaard PAGE 32 / FILM#67 / PRODUCER LISE LENSE-MØLLER / INTERVIEW

Burma VJ Photo: Framegrab HOW TO HANDLE A HIT Burma VJ has won more than 30 awards at the world’s top festivals, including the Joris FROM DOWNING STREET TO HOME PARTIES Ivens Award at IDFA. The film has impressed world leaders like Gordon Brown and This is by no means the 52-year-old producer’s first Václav Havel and activated thousands of grassroots activists. And it’s still going strong acquaintance with film awards and international today, more than a year after it premiered. FILM met with the Danish producer Lise recognition. Working in the business since the late Lense-Møller for a chat about how she dealt with the success of Burma VJ. 1970s, Lense-Møller has more than 40 productions to her name. Still, Burma VJ represents a new By Louise Skov Andersen Or do they? “It doesn’t make any sense to judge a chapter in her scrapbook. documentary film’s success by feature-film criteria. More than anything, it is the distribution that sets She actually thought Burma VJ was a film with As regards the British opening, only one screening this awardwinning documentary – about Burmese limited distribution potential, not least theatrically, had been scheduled for many of those 42 screens, video journalists fighting for freedom of expression the kind of film that, though it offers an amazing so if you went by the following week’s box-office during the monks’ protest and the popular cinema experience, is almost impossible to market statistics the film wouldn’t look like the big hit uprising in the country in 2007 – apart from her without emanating an element of ‘obligatory film’ it actually was,” Lense-Møller says. “Distribution past productions. Beyond distributing to festivals, about it to someone in the lobby with his tubs of strategies for documentaries have to be invented cinemas, TV and other traditional platforms, the popcorn and cola. People might want to see it, they anew for every new film, if the films are going to go team behind Burma VJ also worked with political may even feel they ought to see it, but it’s still the beyond television and festivals.” organisations and key persons, as well as tireless kind of film they end up passing over in favour of The strategy for Burma VJ had to be readjusted volunteers and relief organisations, trying to get the less demanding fare. several times, as the film’s opportunities expanded. film out to as many people as possible. They even Producer Lise Lense-Møller is not very often “Burma VJ has had the strongest word of mouth I set up an ambassador network of people who have a proven wrong, but in this case she was way off ever saw for any film, so we were able to do things special interest in advancing the film. the mark. Burma VJ has enjoyed a successful with it that would have been impossible with other “We work with distribution on three levels: 1) international run since premiering at CPH:DOX in films. For months after the premiere, hundreds of ‘traditional’ film distribution, 2) the political level November 2008. It is the rare documentary that inquiries about the film would pour in every day, and and 3) interest and grassroots networks,” Lense- has been able to compete with the big blockbusters it’s still far from over. Servicing the demand is a full- Møller says. As a result, the film has been screened for critical and audience attention. Last July, time job,” Lense-Møller tells FILM, as we meet with at more than 100 festivals and at international Burma VJ opened on 42 screens in the UK and was her one chilly autumn morning at her film company, conferences on press freedom. It has rolled across outperformed only by the new Harry Potter movie Magic Hour Films, in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. It’s been Gordon and Sarah Brown’s flat screen at Downing in terms of revenue per screening. The figures speak almost a year since Burma VJ won the prestigious Street 10 and been the centrepiece of home parties for themselves. Joris Ivens Award in Amsterdam. in less prominent homes the world over. Former PRODUCER LISE LENSE-MØLLER / INTERVIEW / FILM#67 / PAGE 33

Czech president Václav Havel was so impressed by Then, when the awards started pouring in, everyone years has made people feel that they need to act. the film that he later habitually handed out signed wanted a piece of the pie,” Lense-Møller says. I personally made the leap from ‘cultural films’ to copies of it to his friends in politics, including US “We managed to finish the film just in time for films with a greater political engagement in order Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In China, a fan its premiere at CPH:DOX and IDFA in 2008, but to get people off the couch,” Lense-Møller says. offered to translate Burma VJ into Chinese in return still hadn’t finalised all the financing agreements. “Many things have happened politically that have for a free DVD of the film. As soon as we won, however, everyone wanted restricted the freedom of speech and the range and “Democratic Voice of Burma – the organisation in. Everyday there were new demands about who nuance of the knowledge about society that we that the journalists in the film are working for – has to list in the credits, and how, and what masters need as citizens. Newspapers and TV stations are a primary goal of raising awareness about conditions and versions to provide. It was a rather chaotic increasingly ruled by self-censorship, because of the in Burma. That’s why they risk their lives every day and ultimately a quite costly period for us,” Lense- political climate and the financial demands they are and that’s why they wanted to work with us on Møller says. In the future, she hopes to be in a under. That leaves documentaries with an important this film. So, apart from our own interest in getting position where she can insist on settling financing role to perform. At their best, documentaries the film out, we also have an obligation to them,” agreements and credit requirements before a film provide a service no one else provides.” Lense-Møller says. The intensive grassroots efforts premieres. Burma VJ is such a film. “When you do have been particularly effective in putting Burma on “As a producer, you’re in a bind,” she says. “If documentaries, you want to change the world,” she the map of world politics. there is a giant hole in your financing and someone says. “It’s very rare that a film gets to do that, but this “The three distribution strategies feed each is waving a 100,000 euro cheque in your face, you one probably has, to a certain extent. And, of course, other. A theatrical hit like we had in the UK, which tend to put up with more than you really like. You that’s a motivation to keep going.” earned us ‘bragging rights’ for nearly upstaging can’t tell them to take a hike, because you simply Harry Potter, plus the screening at Downing Street can’t afford to.” For further information about Burma VJ — Reporting 10, helps raise media attention. It helps us recruit So it was a bit of a shock, albeit a pleasant one, to on a Closed Country, see reverse section. even more ambassadors for the film and increases Lense-Møller and the rest of the team behind Burma the buzz, which activates grassroots networks and VJ to see how big their film got. At the same time, helps our sales agent sell to more TV stations and the producer certainly understands why so many at somewhat better prices than I got for my other people were affected by this story of independent films,” she says. Burmese video journalists risking their lives, armed “It’s an amazing feeling when every door opens only with tiny camcorders, to report on the Burmese like this, but it takes innovative thinking, continuing government’s war on its own people. fine-tuning and a willingness to take risks with “It touches on humankind’s deep-rooted need the usual distribution strategies,” she says. “For for liberty. We may not live in a repressive society, example, long before the DVD release, we decided but there are always dissatisfying situations, which to hand out free copies to a large number of film can be dealt with if we do something. These people ambassadors, who organise private or institutional are doing something. They are doing it without screenings. That’s a huge job, because there’s no dreaming of becoming heroes, with a courage, pre-existing system for it and a lot of coordination is humility and patience that’s nothing less than needed among the three levels. So, we had to invent gripping. They make you realise that ordinary new tools and routines to handle that.” people can change things,” Lense-Møller says. Shortly after Burma VJ premiered, she screened the EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE OF THE PIE film in Poland to a group of filmmakers from the The distribution channels were not the only things former Eastern Bloc nations, who had no trouble that set Burma VJ apart from Lense-Møller’s past relating to its message. productions. Events in Burma had already made “They felt like it was their story,” Lense-Møller Photo: Jan Buus it necessary several times to radically change the says. “And it is. You don’t have to be from one of the film’s form and running time over the course of worst military dictatorships in the world to identify LISE LENSE-MØLLER / PRODUCER Involved in the production of more than 50 Danish features, production, which first began in 2005. “When with the Burmese journalists’ story.” shorts and documentaries. Burma VJ won the Joris Ivens the monks started their protests, a number of TV Award at IDFA 2008 and numerous other awards at festivals, stations said they preferred an on-the-spot current FILMS THAT CHANGE THE WORLD including CPH:DOX, Sundance and Cinema for Peace in Berlin. affairs report instead of the creative documentary The political climate of the last decade is a major Lense-Møller has served as an instructor in co-production and project development in Denmark and abroad, has been a regular we had set out to make. For the same reason there reason why Lense-Møller today concentrates on team leader and expert at EAVE, the EU training programme, and was a lot of interest among broadcasters, but also political documentaries. lectured at the National Film School of Denmark. Lense-Møller is some hesitation, about making pre-sale agreements. “The development over the last eight to ten a founder and owner of the company Magic Hour Films.

Anders Østergaard is serving on the jury that will pick a winner competing in the category of Best Mid- Looking for Length Documentary. Among the things the Danish filmmaker looks for is “dramatic nerve.” Dramatic Serving on a festival jury, though, is new to the Danish documentary ace. “I don’t follow any ideological programme. I intend to approach the Nerve job without prejudice,” he says. “Dramatic nerve is extremely important in a documentary of a certain Last year his Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed length. The story has to have an epic power to match Country took top honours in Amsterdam. This year it the format. That’s something I’ll probably take a pretty is screening in the Reflecting Images programme and critical view of as a jury member.” Director Anders Østergaard Photo: Magic Hour Films PAGE 34 / FILM#67 / LISE LENSE-MØLLER / INTO ETERNITY

OBLIGED TO TAKE A STAND He started out liberating teddy bears from Shell stations. Then he was a squatter. Today, Frank Piasecki Poulsen makes documentaries that bring the Third World home to affluent Westerners. FILM spoke to the Danish filmmaker who runs on spontaneous indignation at the injustices of the world.

BY LOUISE SKOV ANDERSEN

He made his debut in 2005 with Guerrilla Girl, a

Into Eternity Photo: Magic Hour Films portrait of a city girl who leaves behind her cushy middle-class life to join a training camp for the FARC guerrilla movement deep in the Colombian jungle. In autumn 2010, Frank Piasecki Poulsen is bringing out Blood in the Mobile, which documents child workers illegally labouring in eastern Congo mines for stretches of up to a week at a time, extracting the minerals that go into the mobile phones we all have in our pockets. “Films and TV reports about the Third World quickly seem irrelevant to us here in the West. I’m securing consumed with how to do stories from that part of the world in ways that make them relevant. Blood in the Mobile is an ideal opportunity to do just that. We all have mobile phones. I’m holding mine to my ear right now, and so are you,” Poulsen says, when FILM catches him on the mobile network. the future obsessed with injustice Lise Lense-Møller’s latest project, Into The need for carbon-neutral energy sources has led Poulsen, 34, has been obsessed with inequity since Eternity, is a documentary, directed by to a renaissance for nuclear power, but there are childhood. He grew up in a family that discussed Michael Madsen, about the world’s first still a lot of unsolved problems involving the waste, politics at the dinner table, and when he was 12 he permanent burial chamber for nuclear waste which indirectly leads to the question of whether decided to do something about all the injustices he currently under construction in Finland. The atomic energy is the best solution.” Into Eternity is was hearing about. burial chamber, known as Onkalo, is an scheduled to premiere at December’s UN Climate When the oil giant Shell came into the media underground storage facility intended to last Change Conference in Copenhagen. spotlight for doing business with the South African 100,000 years without human involvement. “Once the film is finished, we’ll use some of the apartheid government, young Frank joined the That’s how long it takes for the waste to no experiences and methods we amassed in connection Teddy Bear Liberation Front, raiding petrol stations longer pose a threat to humankind. with Burma VJ to devise the film’s distribution,” to free the white plush bears, used by Shell as prizes for its customers. Later he became part of BY LOUISE SKOV ANDERSEN Copenhagen’s squatter movement and started “The film focuses on the working for a grassroots TV station, TV Stop. “The film focuses on the philosophical and philosphical and existential “I have always been obsessed with injustice in existential implications of building something that implications of building the world and the need to do something about it,” is supposed to last for 100,000 years. Humankind he says. “Today it’s my job. The energy I once used never did anything remotely like it before and, in something that is supposed in my work as an activist I’ve carried over to my essence, we don’t know if it will succeed,” Lense- to last for 100,000 years.” professional work.” Møller says. Poulsen not only gives his audiences a chance “At the same time, the consequences of failure are Lise Lense-Møller to learn about the world’s problems, he enables so vast. The whole world’s nuclear power industry them to do something about them. People need is eagerly watching this pioneer project. However, she says. “We’re dealing with other interest groups opportunities to act, he says. no final decisions have yet been made, or solutions and networks this time, and we can’t be sure that “People usually leave the cinema feeling really found, regarding how to warn future generations the film will be a festival hit, of course, but we depressed after this kind of film. ‘That’s how the world about the facility’s lethal contents. We know that certainly aim for distribution on the same three is and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ I think it’s knowledge is lost over time, so information and levels – traditional, political and activist/consumer- enormously important for the filmmaker to personally warnings are needed. But how do you communicate based – like we did with Burma VJ as a means to put take a stand on his subject and point out some avenues so far into the future? What language and symbols this issue on the agenda as widely and broadly as of action, so it’s not all hopeless,” he says. “Though do you use? And where do you put the information? possible. I show some pretty horrific things, I try to maintain BLOOD IN THE MOBILE / FRANK PIASECKI POULSEN / WORK IN PROGRESS / FILM#67 / PAGE 35

“Though I show some pretty horrific things, I try to maintain a sense of optimism and show people that there is actually something we can do. We can change the world, if we want to. And I want to play a part in that.” Frank Piasecki Poulsen

Blood i the Mobile Photo: Frederik Jacobi Blood in the Mobile Photo: Frederik Jacobi a sense of optimism and show people that there is “They can address the issue or they can ignore us,” actually something we can do. We can change the he says. “So it’s really up to them whether they want world, if we want to. And I want to play a part in that.” to be heroes or villains in my film. Of course, the best thing would be if they said, ‘You’re right, this AUDIENCE-FINANCED AIRLINE TICKETS won’t do.’ They probably won’t, but hope springs Inspired in part by the American media company eternal.” Brave New Films and the British film “The Age of Regardless of how it turns out, Poulsen’s visit to Stupid,” Poulsen recently launched a campaign Helsinki will be nothing like his visits to the mining in partnership with the new media entrepreneur town of Bisie in eastern Congo, where he saw dead Mikkel Skov Petersen, an old friend, and the producer bodies in the street and learned how hard it was to Ole Tornbjerg. The campaign aims to finance find a woman who hadn’t been raped within the last parts of Blood in the Mobile plus give the audience year or so. opportunities to actively do something about the “People go there voluntarily, hoping to make some problems in Congo. This includes linking to a money so they can go home and open a small store signature drive against Nokia’s use of these minerals. or start an education. But living there is enormously On the Blood in the Mobile webpage, it has expensive and, because they have to pay a tax to get also been possible since September to donate out again, most are trapped in the mining area for money toward specific expenses, such as airline years. It’s a nightmare,” Poulsen says. Photo: Frederik Jacobi tickets, like the Obama campaign did in last year’s The Danish director has learned to disconnect American election. The hope is that the audience’s his emotions when he’s in Congo. Returning to his involvement will help sway mobile giants like Nokia family in Copenhagen, it’s hard to readapt to normal, FRANK PIASECKI POULSEN to own up to their responsibility. everyday life. Born 1975, Denmark. Poulsen began his film career at a “We’re seeing illegal mining in Congo, but “Then I just need to lie down and bawl into a Copenhagen TV network. Graduated from the National Film the mobile companies are turning a blind eye. pillow. Still, in those periods when I didn’t leave and School of Denmark, 2001. Worked as director, photographer and scriptwriter, primarily for the national broadcaster DR. The themes of Companies like Nokia have the power. If they didn’t try to do something to change things, I felt his work include youth, politics and third world issues. Guerrilla Girl demanded to know how their suppliers get their worse,” he says. (2005) attracted worldwide interest, was showcased at IDFA’s First minerals, things would change.” “I really have a hard time taking domestic Appearance programme, at CPH:DOX, AFI’s Silver Docs, Havana and Sheffield, as well as One World Human Rights Festival, Prague. Danish problems seriously. ‘My God, is that really a 2009: Blood in the Mobile. DISCONNECTING YOUR EMOTIONS problem?’ I think, when one of my friends whines After four trips to Congo, Poulsen and his cameraman about having to paint his new apartment. You might are now headed to Nokia’s corporate headquarters say it’s my professional deformation.” KONCERN TV & FILM PRODUCTION in Finland to confront the mobile manufacturer Founded 1995 by producer Thomas Heurlin. Has since developed into a co-ownership between Thomas Heurlin, Jens Ulrik Pedersen about their Congolese experiences. According to the For further information about Blod I mobile / Blood in and Lars Seidelin. A major player within the field of TV productions, director, the visit could go one of two ways. the Mobile, see catalogue in reverse section. and documentaries. www.koncern.dk PAGE 36 / FILM#67 / THREE DANISH FILMS PITCHING AT FORUM

FRONTLINE SOLDIERS hand throughout their seven months of serving at the frontline in Helmand, Afghanistan. The film is an account of how adrenalin addiction, cynicism and alienation develops in young soldiers, as their idealism succumbs to chaos. This psychological character-driven drama is set in Camp Armadillo, isolated at the top of a desert ridge, where a group of infantry soldiers are stationed. Mads and Daniel are the leading characters, representing the men who risk their lives for a common purpose. Armadillo also addresses the current situation and the complexities of the conflict by contrasting the ambition of the international coalition to develop and democratize Afghanistan, with military standard operating procedures on the one hand, and on the other, the wheeling and dealings of the civilians, who struggle for survival, stuck between the fighting powers. Armadillo Photo: Lars Skree

When operations become hairy adrenalin addiction and cynicism In an unprecedented agreement sets in for the young Danish soldiers at the front line in Afghanistan. with the Danish army, director Janus Pitching at IDFA Forum. Armadillo will This contributes to a widening of the gap between themselves Metz and cinematographer Lars be directed by Janus Metz, produced by and the Afghan civilians. Armadillo is a journey into the minds Skree were given full access to film Ronnie Fridthjof for Fridthjof Film / of the soldiers and their experiences of modern warfare. a group of Danish soldiers at close www.f-film.dk FREE THE MIND Are traditional methods of that it is possible to re-wire the brain punishment for criminal through meditation. offenses the right way to go? Statistics reveal that 80 percent Brain-scientist Professor of American prisoners are repeating Richard Davidson believes that offenders. Davidson will conduct an the practice of ‘mindfulness’ experiment with American prisoners, meditation invokes empathy teaching them how to meditate and compassion in the mind. ‘mindfulness,’ to see if this affects their He examines the affects of this criminal behaviour. meditation on prisoners. Davidson and his staff have given director Phie Ambo exclusive For Professor Davidson there is no access to his laboratory to follow doubt that meditation can transform the research. Moreover Ambo will humankind into a more peaceful also meet with the judicial system. species. Ordinary people can change The prisoners and their emotional their minds through just eight journey during the meditation period, weeks of meditation training. Focus, their meeting with loved ones during concentration and calmness are visiting hours will be followed. enhanced and generosity becomes a personality trait. Pitching at IDFA Forum. Free the Mind The tool used to determine physical will be directed by Phie Ambo. Produced changes in the brain when meditating by Sigrid Helene Dyekjær for Danish is the MRI scanner. Through studying Documentary Production / Buddhist monks, Davidson has found www.danishdocumentary.com Free the Mind Photo: Danish Documentary Production THREE DANISH FILMS PITCHING AT FORUM / FILM#67 / PAGE 37

by creating the Olympic games. This film, the very first about tennis, is a tribute to the two lengendary figures for whom the period 1978-1981 was one long tennis match Björn Borg and John McEnroe. Borg, whose game is catlike and classic, attacks the challenge with stoic calm. Adored by women but never shows feelings, as he sees it as a sign of weakness. He quits tennis at 25, as no. 1 after winning Wimbledon five consecutive times. McEnroe, on the other hand, has lightning reactions and great artistry. Flamboyant, unmannerly and emotional, he loses his sense of orientation when Borg leaves tennis. The film will consist of some 80 percent archive material the

Borg-McEnroe Love All Photo: Polfoto/PA remainder new. The directors will also delve into the biology of tennis; A dramatic rivalry between by going into the technical details of two unforgettable legends: the rivals’ specific style and game play Björn Borg and John McEnroe in contrast to the overall game. They is at the core of this epic story will look at how tennis shaped their about heroes and adversaries. lives, and how they shaped tennis for A universal story of how man future generations. They will mirror needs his worst adversary in the story of two young tennis players DRAMATIC order to be the best. against present day figures

Throughout history, rivalry has Pitching at IDFA Forum. Borg-McEnroe been the strongest driving force of Love All, directed by Daniel Dencik and mankind. Something the ancient Rasmus Dinesen. Produced by Birgitte Skov RIVALRY Greeks recognized and systemized and Nynne Selin for SF Film Production. DFI key contacts / amsterdaM 2009

HENRIK BO NIELSEN CLAUS LADEGAARD MALENE FLINT PEDERSEN Chief Executive Officer Head of Department Head of Development / Production & Development / Production & Development [email protected] Cell +45 4034 9996 [email protected] [email protected] Cell +45 4032 6212 Cell +45 2744 2567

ANNE MARIE KÜRSTEIN JESPER JACK Michael Haslund- Festival Manager DFI Film Commissioner CHRISTENSEN / Shorts & Documentaries Short Fiction & Documentary DFI Film Commissioner Short Fiction & Documentary [email protected] [email protected] Cell +45 4041 4697 Cell +45 2256 7034 [email protected] Cell +45 2023 1388

MIRIAM NØRGAARD KIM LEONA DFI Film Commissioner Project Editor / Short Fiction & Documentary – New Danish Screen Children & Youth [email protected] [email protected] Cell + 45 2068 9849 Cell + 45 4114 5359 DFI.DK PAGE 38 / FILM#67 / AMSTERDAM SPECIAL ISSUE